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Medieval
Pedagogical Writings
AN EPITOME

Sarah B. Lynch

Medieval Pedagogical
Writings

AN EPITOME

Sarah B. Lynch

Libera Scientia | Free Knowledge

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome
by Sarah B. Lynch

Epitomes, 3
Series Editors: Tim Barnwell & N. Kivilcim Yavuz

Published in 2018

by Kismet Press LLP

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Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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Contents

Introduction 1
I Authors and Works 9

Il The Beginning and End of Elementary
and Grammar Education 43

Ill Organising the School Day and Schoolroom 51

Iv Corporal Punishment 63
V Natural Ability a?
VI Morals and Religion 87
Vil Being a Teacher 105
vill Education of Women 115
Conclusion 129
Notes 131
Bibliography 145

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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For Ruth

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Acknowledgements

AS A YOUNGER SCHOLAR, I CAN’T IN ANY WAY THANK
everyone who has helped with my work. Too many
friends, colleagues, and teachers have read drafts, been
patient sounding boards, and (most critically) understood
my never-ending need for tea.

To Christine Meek and Rosalind Brown-Grant for
introducing me to some of the works around which this
book revolves. And to Robert Black and William Flynn
for supervising my doctorate.

To the Institute for Historical Research (London),
the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, and the Royal
Historical Society for their financial assistance. These
awards helped me get to the libraries and archives that I
needed and made me feel like I was on the right track.
And to the Wall Street Institute of English, Lyon, and its
previous director, Pierre Colliot, for giving me a job that
helped me stay in Lyon for an extraordinary two years.

To Tim Barnwell, N. Kivilcim Yavuz, and Ricky
Broome at Kismet Press for all their hard work on this
project and especially to Tim for his patience during a
difficult year. We need more publishing endeavours like

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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Kismet focused on open access publishing in academia. I
wish everyone involved the very best.

To the denizens of the Le Pat and the MAH.

To Mark Lewis Tizzoni, for being there. And finally
to my parents, Patrick and Frances, who have tirelessly
supported me throughout the years. Thank you.

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

Introduction

What Are Medieval Pedagogical
Writings?

WHAT ARE MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS? THE
simple answer is that they comprise of any work that deals
with the nature of learning and teaching and how these
activities should be carried out. That neat description
functions quite well for most of this little book but it
falls down if we ask it other questions, such as what did
‘medieval pedagogical writings’ look like? What kind of
template did they follow? Were all the authors who wrote
medieval pedagogical works teachers? Can they be placed
into one category that predisposed them to write about
medieval education? The complex truth is this: medieval
pedagogical writings didn’t all look the same, they didn’t
follow a particular template, or address the very same
topics or questions. This one here is a systematic treatise
on education but that one is a letter, that other one a
poem. Some only discuss education in a small subsection
of a much larger work, perhaps on the subject of reviving
the Crusade. Medieval pedagogical advice was written by
people in very disparate positions, many of whom were

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2 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

not teachers in any shape or form, and some of whom had
no obvious business writing about education. This is why
this Epitome is not called Medieval Educational Treatises,
because then could we really look at Bernard of Chartres’s
classroom practice, as recorded by a man who had never
met him and certainly never been taught by him? Could
we justify examining a poem of the allegorical four ages
of man or a set of rules drawn up for choirboys? Perhaps,
but perhaps not.

Medieval pedagogical writings defy classification.
They struggle with being a discreet genre because they
don’t take the same form or style, spilling across the
boundaries from poetry to didactic tracts to epistles. Only
their common subject matter lends them consistency.
In this guise, they could be a subgenre of prescriptive
literature but even that is awkward because their tone is
not always demanding and regulating but occasionally
contemplative. They engage with everyday questions of
teaching and learning, seeking to modulate the black and
white of their advice with areas of grey. One of the most
interesting examples of this in pedagogical writings is the
sensitivity to individual circumstances, from the natural
gifts of the individual pupil to the challenges faced by the
individual teacher.

This Epitome, therefore, does not discuss every single
piece of writing on education read and composed during
the Middle Ages. Alas, it cannot. Instead, it concentrates
on themes revisited by a selection of antique and
medieval authors (from the first century to the fifteenth).
These themes can be found in other works that discuss
education in the Middle Ages. This is the principal aim of

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INTRODUCTION | 3

this book: to provide a framework of interrogation that
can be used far beyond the texts examined here.

Why Read Medieval Pedagogical
Writings?

The whole history of medieval education — from
elementary education right the way to the university
— has been greatly helped by the existence of a large
number of works dealing with pedagogy. While these
works express the personal experiences and opinions
of individual authors, they also provide information on
common forms of educational organisation, as well as
showing what topics were of most concern to medieval
people. Pedagogical literature, therefore, allows the
modern person to glimpse the ideas that surrounded
elementary and grammar education in the later Middle
Ages. In addition to revealing theoretical frameworks for
schooling below the level of the university, they attempt
to engage in the realities of medieval education too. Yes,
many medieval commentators on instruction wanted to
imbue the whole experience with Christian morals but
how did one do that? How did one put the theory into
effect? From Jerome to Pope Pius II, they all offered
justifications and recommendations that were seen as
feasible, advice that could be employed within the real
classroom.

Works such as the ones discussed here also allow us
to listen into the medieval educational debate. Just as
pundits today go back and forth on class sizes and the
importance of early childhood education, these writers

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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4 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

wrote arguments and counterarguments on aspects
of pedagogy as diverse as whether girls should be
instructed or whether masters should beat their pupils.
And these were debates that ranged over centuries.
Furthermore, the evidence provided by literature on
education can be directly compared to that emerging
from documentary sources, like proceedings of church
chapters and municipal councils, and teaching contracts.
There is much agreement between the theory and what
is revealed in these medieval documents: for example,
there is abundant proof that shows that the age of seven
really was the usual age to begin formal education and
wasn’t just an arbitrary age set down by commentators.
But sometimes they didn’t agree. Many of the authors
focused on the intangible benefits of moral and spiritual
betterment of Christian instruction, but many parents
who sent their children to school were not immediately
concerned with the saving power of reading the Bible
in Latin. While the religious aspect would have pleased
them, they were equally interested in the more tangible
social and economic benefits. The dreaded spectre of
return-on-investment haunted medieval parents and
teachers too.

So we get can get a lot out of medieval pedagogical
writings. We can explore the ideas that (some) people
had about elementary and grammar education, as
seen above. But we can also get some more concrete
information about what schooling was like in the Middle
Ages. Philippe Ariés wrote in 1960 that ‘it is difficult for
modern man to visualise’ premodern education without
examining ‘the conditions of life in the school and its

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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INTRODUCTION | 5

environment’! Happily, many historians since then
have rectified that deficiency (see the recommendations
for further reading at the end) but he did hit upon a
problem we all face when looking into the past. How
do we reconstruct it in order to see it and, even more
importantly, what materials can and should we use? In the
case of medieval elementary and grammar education, we
have many sources but the treatises and poems and letters
that we look at here give us more than the fees pupils paid
or the size of the building the master rented. They give
us the feel of education, the atmosphere in which it took
place. We know that corporal punishment took place but
these works help us understand why. It was not merely
the relationship between a bad action and a punitive
reaction but a wide-ranging interplay between questions
of discipline and purification. There was also an intense
awareness of the cause and effect of corporal punishment,
with theorists openly discussing the dangers of producing
damaging levels of shame and, ultimately, anger in the
pupil. Medieval pedagogical writings, therefore, give us a
distinctive impression of what actual instruction was like,
for teacher and for pupil. Indeed, the information available
in these works provides the backdrop, the painted scene,
before which the facts of medieval education perform.
They recreate the mental milieu in which teachers and
pupils operated, usually unconsciously, but they also
seek to describe in more elevated terms the instruction
of children, which could be treated with contempt in the
Middle Ages.

The final reason why we should read and examine the
medieval pedagogical writings is that the production of

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6 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

such manuals and so on demonstrate that elementary
and grammar education was considered worthy of such
attention. Elementary and grammar education was where
children learned the fundamentals of literacy of the
Middle Ages: how to read, how to say their prayers, how
to understand Latin (the lingua franca of the educated),
how to write, and how to compose correctly. Many
pupils would have only participated in the first, most
elementary, part of this instruction, learning their prayers
and how to sound out the written word and perhaps how
to write their name (a useful talent in the later Middle
Ages when an increasingly legal-minded society required
witnesses). Those who advanced into more explicit
grammar education might have ended up reading Terence
and Seneca and other authors studied at a university
level. Despite its elementary nature, several of the great
minds of the Middle Ages spent time considering this
category of education. Jerome wrote about how a little
girl’s hand should be clasped in her teacher’s in order
to show her how to hold a stylus. A German graduate
of the University of Paris deliberated upon how the
perfect schoolhouse should be built. Jean Gerson, pre-
eminent theologian of his time and Chancellor of the
University of Paris, grappled with how best to teach the
basics of faith to little boys and girls. It didn’t matter how
basic this education was; what mattered was that it was
fundamental to all other academic endeavours. It laid the
foundations for all intellectual activities and the authors
of the works discussed here recognised that fact, and
made elementary and grammar education a fitting subject
for theoretical debate. We are often tricked into thinking

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INTRODUCTION | 7

that the Middle Ages was somehow anti-knowledge,
indifferent to learning or, at least, dismissive to all else
but pure theology. Medieval pedagogical writings belie
this assertion, exploring as they do the most rudimentary
levels of instruction in many different manifestations.

A Brief Note on Terminology

Since this Epitome is principally concerned with what is
written about elementary and grammar education, we
should consider that term and what exactly it seeks to
describe. There were no national education systems in
the Middle Ages and, as we will discuss in Chapters 2 and
5, there was no firmly designated age when a child was
supposed to be learning a specific subject or engaging
with a subject at a predetermined level. Elementary and
grammar instruction, and the schools and teachers who
offered it, principally meant any formalised education that
was taking place below the level of the university. It could
be utilised as preparation in order to enter a university
but it could also stand alone, acting as training for other
trajectories in life, from becoming a skilled craftsman to
making a good marriage. It was primarily a conduit for
acquiring Latin literacy. In later periods, it also offered
instruction in writing, arithmetic, and even in vernacular
languages. Elementary and grammar education was
usually experienced by those who were quite young,
usually between the ages of seven and fourteen. Then
again, as we will see, it was never restricted to that age
group, with younger children attending schools and older
teenagers continuing much later as need and opportunity

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8 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

allowed. The term ‘elementary and grammar education’,
in other words, is exactly that, a period of instruction in
which the fundamentals of literacy and other academic
subjects were introduced to primarily children.

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I
Authors and Works

THIS IS A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO EDUCATIONAL
treatises read and written in the Middle Ages up to 1500.
It is not, in any way, a definitive list, or even a ‘best of’ list.
Instead, this Epitome highlights some widely-read works
(by Quintilian, Augustine, Jerome), some little-known
works (the Commendation of the Clerk), and some very
curious works (Pierre Dubois’s Recovery of the Holy Land).
So what works are we going to look at in this little book?
Which writers spent the time writing about education
and specifically elementary and grammar education?

Quintilian

The Education of an Orator (Institutio oratoria),
ca. 95, Latin

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (ca. 35-ca. 100) was a noted
rhetorician of the first century, who was probably from
Hispania. Educated at Rome, he appears to have returned

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10 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

home to Hispania to practise law, only returning to
Rome as a very low-level member of the entourage of the
emperor Galba in 69. His lack of importance was probably
what saved him after Galba’s assassination and he did not
actively participate in politics after this point. Instead, he
opened what became a well-regarded school in Rome.
There he taught rhetoric, the art of discourse and debate,
to the sons of the Roman elites, including Pliny the
Younger (serial letter writer and witness to the eruption
of Vesuvius). Tacitus may also have been a student. The
emperor Vespasian (69-79) made Quintilian a consul. As
a result of the extra income from this appointment, he
was able to concentrate more on his school rather than on
pleading cases.

Quintilian wrote The Education of an Orator in his
retirement from teaching and the law, and it became
the handbook for the study and practice of rhetoric.
Rhetoric was one of the key skills needed by educated
Romans in order to engage fully and successfully in public
life. Indeed, Quintilian himself described the goal of his
instruction as producing an active citizen and decried
those who withdrew from the public arena:

I would not have my orator a philosopher,
since no other group of men has withdrawn
farther from the duties of citizenship and
from all the tasks of oratory.”

The Education of an Orator is made up of ten books, almost
all of which are dedicated to an in-depth analysis of the
rules of rhetoric, the stringent requirements for speaking

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AUTHORS AND Works | 11

and writing well. BookI, however, is what we are interested
in here, as it goes into the mechanics of early education.
While Quintilian was not the first to write about this
level of education (he mentions the work of Chrysippus),
his work became the foundation of all later pedagogical
writing, from Jerome to Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. This
widespread influence belies the traditional transmission
of The Education of the Orator. It was supposedly lost in
its entirety until it was ‘rediscovered’ in the monastic
library of Saint Gall in Switzerland in 1418.° It is clear that
sections of The Education of an Orator, especially Book I
on elementary and grammar education, were available
at least as early as the twelfth century. John of Salisbury
had access to Book I at Chartres when he was writing
his Metalogicon in the middle of the twelfth century and
Vincent of Beauvais quoted heavily from Book I when he
was writing during the thirteenth century. We cannot be
certain if John and Vincent were working from coherent
sections of the text or whether they were using a selection
of quotes from Quintilian (known as florilegia), but we
can be certain that they and others saw Quintilian as the
ultimate authority on educational advice. Even though he
was a classical writer, he was very much the keystone of
medieval educational theory.

Quintilian examined many of the issues faced by
teachers throughout history. While The Education of an
Orator was a textbook for aspiring politicians, lawyers,
and bureaucrats, it was also a handbook for teaching. In
Book I, Quintilian distilled his years of experience and
created a way to discuss the practice of teaching and
learning. What he discussed is what everyone discussed

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12 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

(and sometimes still discusses). He looked at the effects
of parents and the household on the future abilities of
children (which continues to be a particularly ripe source
of discussion amongst my friends who are teachers
and classroom assistants). He discussed when the best
time to begin formal instruction was. He looked at how
the atmosphere of the classroom, and the actions of
teachers and pupils, affected teaching and learning. He
deliberated upon the use of corporal punishment, setting
up a millennia-long debate on violence in the classroom.
He examined the challenges of teaching in a mixed-
ability classroom. Almost every pedagogical source
of disagreement is found within Quintilian. He is the
authority who articulated the concept of early education.

Augustine

Confessions (Confessiones), 397-98, Latin
On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana),
397-426, Latin

While Quintilian gives us the vocabulary and structure
in order to discuss elementary and grammar education,
it is Augustine of Hippo (354-430) who gave oratorical
and rhetorical skills a second incarnation as essentials
for Christian life. Augustine the man almost needs no
introduction. Born in the Roman province of Numidia
in North Africa (modern-day Algeria) to a devoutly
Christian mother and a pagan father, he was educated
close to home in the classical Roman style and later went
to Carthage for further studies. He later taught Latin

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AUTHORS AND Works | 13

grammar and rhetoric in his home town, in Carthage,
and then in Rome and Milan. It was at Milan, influenced
by another great orator, Ambrose, where Augustine
converted to Christianity.

Augustine is important to the study of educational
writing for two reasons. Firstly, he gave an extraordinarily
frank account of his own instruction as a young child in
the autobiography of his conversion, his Confessions. Here
we find a first-person description of the experience of a
classical education. He showed that, for his father, the
expense of schooling was meant to lead to an elevated
economic and social status. He also described the terror
of corporal punishment and his failure to acquire a level
of fluency in Greek as a result of a brutal master. Then
again, it was events in his boyhood that convinced the
older Augustine that there was an inherent evil even
in children that required chastisement and physical
correction. When it came to bodily suffering, including
corporal punishment, Augustine’s approach was certainly
conflicted.

Augustine’s second influence on educational writing
was his promotion of traditional Roman grammatical
and rhetorical education as being appropriate for the
burgeoning Christian community. Still struggling to
reconcile Christian beliefs and their position as the
favoured religion of the state, Augustine’s On Christian
Doctrine and other works provided a map towards being a
Christian and being an educated Roman. One of the most
important outcomes of classical education was the ability
of the student to then partake fully in the public life of
the state, to enter onto the cursus honorum, or the ‘course

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14 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

of offices’, But what was the use of such training if, as a
Christian, you were supposed to reject worldly things? If,
as a devout believer, you were going to sell your family
estates and live in a monastic community (as Augustine
himself did at one time)? Augustine advocated continued
study of grammar and rhetoric not to prepare to be an
active citizen of the Empire but instead to become an
active citizen of heaven. Grammar allowed the Christian to
better understand the Holy Scriptures. Rhetoric allowed
the Christian to preach the Word more effectively and to
win over doubters with subtle debate. As Augustine put
it, reading Cicero’s now lost work Hortensius:

changed the whole feeling of my mind,
giving a new direction to the prayers I
offered to You, O God.*

Augustine’s advocacy was essential for the continued
importance that grammar and rhetoric played in medieval
education.

Jerome

Letter to Laeta, 403, Latin
Letter to Pacatula, 413, Latin

Jerome (ca. 347-420), Augustine’s contemporary and
fellow Church Father, was another brilliant student of
classical learning who turned to an ascetic Christian life.
Born in Illyria (modern-day Croatia), little is known
about his own education before he moved to Rome as

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AUTHORS AND Works | 15

a teenager. There, he studied under Aelius Donatus,
composer of the Ars grammatica (The Art of Grammar),
one of the most popular textbooks on Latin grammar in
the Middle Ages. Jerome was torn between his love of
secular learning and his desire to devote himself utterly to
his Christianity, which he fully embraced as a student in
Rome. For a period, he rejected all classical literature and
focused solely on the Bible. And it is for his translation
and edition of the Bible that he is best known.

Jerome, however, did not confine his activities to
the Bible. He was a prolific writer of treatises (against
Christian heresies such as Pelagianism) and of letters, two
of which are discussed here. Jerome acted as a personal
spiritual advisor to many friends and associates over his
long life but his relationship with high-ranking Roman
women revealed much of his more practical guidance.
The women he corresponded with were from prominent,
usually patrician families, and they often reciprocated
with spiritual, emotional, and financial support. And it
was to women such as these that Jerome directed letters
on the education of their family members.

The best known of these is Jerome’s letter to Laeta.
Laeta was the daughter-in-law of Paula, Jerome’s most
generous patron, and the mother of Paula the Younger,
the subject of Jerome’s letter. This communication
contained a remarkable course of study for little Paula
as it recommends an entirely ‘Christian’ education. The
little girl was to have exposure only to Holy Scripture
and the works of appropriate theologians, such as
Hilary of Arles. Her first readings were to be taken from
the Psalms. She was to be completely sheltered from

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16 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

worldly things. This may seem extreme but it must be
remembered that the little girl’s grandmother and mother
had already decided that she would enter the monastic
life. Jerome’s educational plan was specifically tailored
for this purpose. Indeed, it appears that Jerome rejected
the classical tradition in which he himself was educated.
This, however, is not true and the influence of Quintilian
is everywhere. Jerome directly paraphrases Quintilian’s
discussion on the importance of educated and involved
mothers in the educational process, and uses the same
ancient examples, Cornelia Africana (d. ca. 100 BCE) and
Hortensia (fl. ca. 42 BCE). Jerome advises that Paula be
given cut-out letters to play with as does Quintilian. They
only differ because Jerome mentions that they can be
made of boxwood or ivory while Quintilian only mentions
ivory letters. Both Jerome and Quintilian recommended
that a tablet incised with the alphabet be made and that
the child would trace the letter with a stylus to practise
forming the shapes. Jerome may have rebelled against the
classical world, he may have seen the works of Scripture
as being the only writing really worth reading, but he
still advanced the pedagogical methods of Quintilian.
Augustine may have theorised that classical instruction
was valuable as a means to an end, but it was Jerome who
actively embraced the methods of classical instruction.

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AUTHORS AND Works | 17

AElfric Bata

Colloquies, 11th century, Latin

Little is known about A‘lfric Bata, a Latin teacher and
writer in pre-Conquest England. He identified himself as
a student of the noted grammarian and homilist, Alfric
of Eynsham (d. ca. 1015), and his own work indicates his
intellectual descent from the tradition of Anglo-Saxon
colloquies. He also identified himself as a ‘small monk’
and, considering the rowdy tone of his Latin grammar
text, gives us the impression of a raucous character. This is
reinforced by another reference to him in the Miracles of
Saint Dunstan by Osbern, where the saint has to intervene
from above in order to prevent £lfric Bata relieving
the monastery of Christ Church Canterbury of some
property.”

What we do know is that lfric Bata wrote an
intriguing textbook aimed at the young oblates in an
Anglo-Saxon monastery. He himself was the teacher and
the work was probably something he wrote and used with
his pupils. (This is reinforced by the fact that two of the
three surviving manuscripts appear to have revisions and
additions in his own hand.) It consists of conversations in
Latin between oblates and masters and between oblates
and oblates, ranging from the very basics to quotations
from Scripture and patristic texts. These Colloquies,
however, are far from boring interactions between masters
and pupils. The extraordinary vulgarity and violence
portrayed in the text, along with less-than-exemplary
Latin, has divided scholars. It is unclear if Alfric Bata was

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simply reflecting a ‘monastery gone wrong’ or whether he
was using extreme, even comedic language to entertain
(and thus successfully teach) his pupils.° In many ways,
the atmosphere reflected in the Colloquies is much more
reminiscent of the chaos of the fictional St Trinian’s and
St Custard’s (full of mad romps and casual relationships
to literacy) rather than the calm, disciplined educational
experiences of little Paula and Pacatula.’

The Colloquies are of interest to us here as they
contain enormous amounts of information on the daily
lives and instruction of young boys in an Anglo-Saxon
monastery, from what the boys were supposed to wear
(listed in the form of complaint in Colloquy 26) to what
sort of transgressions merited corporal punishment (a
multitude!).

Hugh of Saint-Victor

Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading), after
1120, Latin®

Hugh of Saint-Victor (circa 1096-1141) was a long way
removed from Augustine and Jerome, yet he grappled
with the same questions regarding a Christian education.
Hugh’s background is very obscure but he was either
Saxon or had Saxon connections, and he is associated with
a priory in Saxony. Around 1120, he moved to the abbey
of Saint-Victor near Paris in order to study and eventually
became head of the abbey’s school.

These were heady times, when the schools in
and around Paris became the focus of extraordinary

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AUTHORS AND Works | 19

intellectual activity. Hugh’s work, the Didascalicon or De
studio legendi (On the Study of Reading) was written in
this atmosphere. It was a deeply philosophical work that
principally discussed how learning was not only a way to
understand Scripture better but a saving activity in and of
itself. Being instructed in the liberal arts was, according to
Hugh, a path to salvation. In this he was clearly influenced
by Augustine. Unsurprisingly, the Didascalicon did not
dwell on elementary and grammar education but rather
on promoting a religious tone. The concept that the
instruction itself was a religious activity (though not
entirely original) fed into later medieval approaches
to schooling. Hugh also had some intriguing views on
natural ability that demonstrated the awareness many
medieval authors had of the individual characteristics of
pupils and students.

John of Salisbury

Metalogicon (On the Arts of Verbal Reasoning),
ca. 1159, Latin

The Metalogicon was a theoretic consideration of the
subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric by John of
Salisbury (ca. 1120-80). Like Hugh, John’s background
is unknown but it appears that he was of Anglo-Saxon,
not Norman extraction. We know nothing of his early
education and it is unlikely that he was either rich or
connected. He went to Paris as a teenager, where he
studied briefly under the notorious Peter Abelard and
then moved to the cathedral school at Chartres, also

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in northern France. In these places, he studied not
only Scripture and theology but also the great works
of antiquity that were available at that time. And it is at
Chartres that John formed the idea of the perfect teacher.

The Metalogicon is a fascinating work that promoted
the value of a liberal education in grammar, rhetoric, and
logic. Indeed, Daniel D. McGarry’s 1955 edition of the
text is subtitled a “Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts
of the Trivium’. During the twelfth-century rage for all
things philosophical, John did not want the fundamentals
to be forgotten and gave ample justification for their
continued study and importance. What is particularly
of interest to us, however, is the vignette of Bernard, a
grammar teacher from Chartres, which John provided
in the midst of this treatise. John had never met Bernard
of Chartres, who had died shortly after John was born,
but his pedagogical methods were still being used at
Chartres, and stories of his teaching practice lingered
decades after. John presented Bernard as the perfect
master, ‘the greatest font of literary learning in Gaul in
recent times’.’ And he proceeded to explain exactly how
Bernard approached each sentence of Latin read in the
classroom, what grammatical exercises he gave his pupils
and students, how he punished wrongdoing (specifically
plagiarism). So, in the middle of his theoretical arguments
for the importance of liberal education, he slipped in a
case study of actual teaching techniques, available to be
followed by the eager teacher. It cannot be argued that
the Metalogicon was a handbook, but the section on
Bernard of Chartres is a reminder that it was not meant
as a pure intellectual exercise either. John expected his

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AUTHORS AND Works | 21

readers to take note of what he wrote and, perhaps, follow
the pattern laid down by his ideal master.

Pseudo-Boethius

On the Teaching of School (De disciplina
scolarium), ca. 1230-40, Latin

De disciplina scolarium was a wildly popular work on
education. Probably written in Paris, it experienced
almost immediate success. Nothing is known about the
actual writer except — based ona remark within the text —
they were associated with the University of Paris, and that
they were possibly from Northern or Eastern Europe.’°
Vincent of Beauvais (see below) freely quoted from it and
copies were produced from England to Bohemia — Olga
Weijers identified at least 111 copies in collections across
Europe and North America. It represents a relatively early
example of the dedicated treatise on education, a genre
that was in the process of emerging in the thirteenth
century. Its intended audience was probably professional
educators and others interested in the process of
learning. One manuscript from the fifteenth century
(now in Munich) was copied by ‘Johannes Schiirbrand
of Laugingen, rector of the school in Weilhaim’; in other
words, by the local schoolmaster in a small Bavarian
town. Another, earlier manuscript appears to have been
prepared in Italy for the humanist poet, Petrarch.”

The work itself is wide in its scope, ranging from the
subjects that should be covered, to different capabilities
amongst pupils, to how one becomes a schoolmaster.

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One of the distinct problems with On the Teaching of
School is that it does not state explicitly if it is aimed at the
education of younger children, older children covering
grammar, or even advanced students of philosophy and
theology. Instead, it touches on grammar, dialectics,
as well as elementary instruction. Furthermore, it is
particularly interesting in its discussion of the training
and comportment of teachers, a practical discussion that
was usually ignored by other works with the exception
of the Commendation of the Clerk. No doubt the Pseudo-
Boethian text was an inspiration for the later author.

Vincent of Beauvais

On the Education of Noble Children (De eruditione
filiorum nobilium), before 1249, Latin

Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1190-ca. 1264) was one of the
most widely-read authors of the later Middle Ages. His
biography is murky, like many of our authors. We know
nothing of his childhood and education, and the only
facts that we do have is that he was a Dominican friar
and that he spent the latter part of his life as reader at
the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, just outside Paris.
We also know that he had an intellectual association
with the French royal court and that his opus major, the
Speculum maius or ‘The Great Mirror’, was promoted and
patronised by the court. Vincent’s Speculum was intended
to be a compendium of all knowledge, from astronomy
and astrology to military tactics to a history of the world.
Even more impressive than the scope of the work was how

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AUTHORS AND WorRKS | 23

it demonstrated Vincent’s own knowledge, especially his
familiarity with classical and medieval authors, as well as
authors in Arabic. This was a man who sought to know
everything and transmit this to the wider public. The
historical part of the Speculum maius (adventurously
entitled the Speculum historiale) was, for want of a better
word, a bestseller of the later Middle Ages, both in the
Latin original and in translations into the vernaculars of
Europe, such as Jean de Vignay’s translation into Middle
French in the 1330s.

Unsurprisingly, with his encyclopaedic knowledge,
Vincent became a favourite of the French royal family.
He acted as a kind of educational consultant to Louis
IX of France (who was canonised in 1297) and his
wife, Margaret of Provence. He did not teach the royal
children but he did offer advice directly to the king and
queen, in the form of letters and in the form of a treatise
on education. On the Education of Noble Children was a
substantial addition to the literature on education in the
Middle Ages. It not only discussed the theory and tone
of the instruction of aristocratic boys and girls, but also
the practicalities of such instruction. Vincent was deeply
influenced by both Quintilian and Jerome too, not only
in approaching education in a practical manner but in
directly quoting Quintilian and Jerome. Indeed, this is
another reason why Vincent’s work is so valuable. Because
of his heavy use of quotes and his constant appeals to the
authority of previous authors, we can see what kinds of
books were available to someone interested in education
in the thirteenth century. While Vincent was a special case
(Louis IX was actively acquiring books on his behalf), On

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the Education of Noble Children still demonstrated that
there was an awareness of practical pedagogy as a discreet
subject and that there was access to pertinent information
on it. Finally, On the Education of Noble Children set aside
work on education from that increasingly popular genre,
mirrors for princes, which tended to meditate on broader
considerations such as the ideal traits of rulers and
concepts of the state. Vincent’s advice would have been
quickly disseminated through court circles, eager to copy
the royal couple’s household as a matter of fashion and asa
matter of advancing their (and their children’s) prospects.
While Hugh of Saint-Victor framed his recommendations
in a clerical context, Vincent of Beauvais was writing for
the secular nobility. Once again, the cursus honorum was
open and an educational framework was needed to tread
upon that path.

Philippe of Navarre

The Four Ages of Man (Les Quatre ages de
L’Homme), ca. 1270, French

Philippe of Navarre or Novara (ca. 1200-ca. 1270) was
not a religious like Vincent of Beauvais or Hugh of Saint-
Victor. Instead, he was a servant of the Ibelin family from
the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was a kind of jack-of-all-
trades, doing administrative work for the family, up to
and including serving as a diplomat on their behalf. He
was a warrior and a writer, composing a chronicle of the
Ibelin’s dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick
II (who claimed the Kingdom of Jerusalem). He also

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AUTHORS AND WorkKs | 25

appears to have had some legal knowledge as he also
wrote a treatise on feudal law. It is of interest to note that
he primarily wrote in French, though he himself hailed
from the region around Novara in Northern Italy. French
was widely spoken amongst crusaders in the Holy Land
and had become a new lingua franca in noble and knightly
circles.

Philippe’s poem, The Four Ages of Man (Les Quatre
ages de L’Homme), was a moralising treatise on the four
ages of man: childhood, youth, middle age, and old age.
This was a very popular literary and artistic trope in the
Middle Ages, and it examined the different aspects of each
‘age’; what one should expect and what one should do.
The first two ages, childhood and youth, were concerned
most with preparing for life. And Philippe did indeed
comment on how children should be educated. His focus
was on gaining a decent level of literacy and on cultivating
a strong faith. He discussed knightly instruction and he
also discussed clerical instruction, and emphasised the
way that a career in the Church could raise a poor boy
from poverty to wealth and power. His advice, therefore,
matched the milieu in which he existed. Education was
important not necessarily as a means of pursuing abstract
knowledge but as a way of acquiring worldly skills and
advancement. This focus was imperative in the crusader
states where strength and cultural uniformity had to be
maintained in the face of Muslim pressure and European
interference. Philippe’s advice was sharp and opinionated,
especially on the instruction of women, who he felt should
almost never be educated at all.

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Giles of Rome

On the Direction of Princes (De regimine
principum), ca. 1278, Latin

Giles of Rome (ca. 1243-1316) was very much Vincent
of Beauvais’s successor as educational consultant to the
French royal family. Hailing from Rome — though likely
nota member of the noble Colonna family as once claimed
— he became both prior general of the Augustinian Friars
and bishop of Bourges. A student of Thomas Aquinas, he
was a noted Aristotelian theologian who had been caught
up in a backlash against the popularity of Aristotle’s
philosophy at one time. However, the successes of his
later career and the fact that he was declared doctor beatus
et fundatissimus “blessed and best-grounded doctor’ by
Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century shows that this
controversy was short-lived. He had a similar connection
with Philip HI of France as Vincent of Beauvais had with
Philip’s father, Louis IX, and was clearly favoured by his
advisee, Philip IV ‘the Fair’.

On the Direction of Princes is a work that sits
comfortably into the genre of ‘mirrors for princes’. It
provided the standard information thought necessary
for future rulers, including lengthy exhortations on the
importance of being a moral king or prince. Since the
body of the ruler was a microcosm of the body of the
state, an avatar even, the training and the conduct of the
future ruler would have direct implications for the state.
And education was one of the subjects dealt with by
Giles. He focused on three aspects of education: religious

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AUTHORS AND WorKSs | 27

instruction, the subjects that were to be taught, and the
nature and characteristics of the teacher. He discussed in
depth the importance of religious education for children
who were not intended for careers in the Church and
he emphasised the acquisition of Latin. As the language
of scholarly learning and the lingua franca of Western
Europe, it was a necessary accomplishment. Learning it
also promoted diligence and other fine virtues. Not all
rulers during this period had the level of Latin that Giles
promoted.

On the Direction of Princes was widely read, especially
after it was translated into French around 1330. Its title in
this manifestation, Li Livres du gouvernement des rois or
“The Book of the Government of Kings’ clearly indicated
its intended role as handbook for good government. The
object of Giles’s advice, Philip the Fair, did not appear
to take much of the guidance to heart. Philip was, after
all, the French king who helped destabilise the Papacy,
which lead eventually to the Western Schism in 1378. He
also expelled the Jews from his kingdom and suppressed
the Knights Templar. But it should also be noted that, as
bishop of Bourges, Giles was present at the council that
denounced the Templars.

Pierre Dubois

On the Recovery of the Holy Land (De
recuperatione Terrae Sanctae), 1305-07, Latin

While Philippe of Navarre wrote for the Latin community
in the Holy Land, Pierre Dubois (fl. ca. 1300) was writing

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about creating an entire community whose sole purpose
was to crusade and to crusade successfully. Dubois was a
royal advocat in Constances, Normandy, around the turn
of the fourteenth century. He appears to have attended
the University of Paris for a time — where he heard
lectures from Thomas Aquinas and Sigur of Brabant. Well-
schooled in scholastic philosophy and methodology, it is
also likely that he studied at the University of Orleans, just
south of Paris, which was a centre of civil legal studies. He
himself does not appear to have had any particular links to
the Holy Land but it is clear that he was strongly affected
by the fall of Acre in 1291, as was most of Christendom.
The capitulation of the last crusader city in the Holy Land
and the removal of the kings of Jerusalem to Cyprus had
resulted in many calls for a renewed crusader spirit in
Europe. Pierre Dubois’s ‘plan’, however, reached much
further than simple rhetoric.

On the Recovery of the Holy Land was a statement
outlining a radical retooling of European, and specifically,
French society in order to create a culture whose sole
goal was the successful recovery of the Holy Land. And
for Dubois, this had to begin in childhood. Children, both
boys and girls, would be selected at the age of five and sent
to schools where they would train in every conceivable
subject, from philosophy and theology to engineering,
from medicine to languages, from the art and practice
of war to carpentry. What Dubois was proposing was
not only a military conquest but a cultural and religious
conquest, using men and women trained in these schools
to bring a Christian Holy Land to fruition not through
force alone, but through leadership and persuasion.

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AUTHORS AND Works | 29

The hearts and minds of the inhabitants were the true
objective. While On the Recovery of the Holy Land survives
in only one manuscript (Vatican, BAV, Reg. Lat. 1642), it
reveals that some saw education as the means to reinvent
late medieval society, that education was the ‘silver
bullet’ for the ills of Christendom. Dubois’s theories and
recommendations were indeed drastic and it is unlikely
that they came to the attention of his master, Philip the
Fair of France. After all, Dubois had advocated that the
property of the recently-condemned Templars should be
used to finance these schools. This same property had just
been confiscated by Philip.

Geoffrey de la Tour Landry

Book for the Education of his Daughters (Livre
pour Venseignement de ses filles), ca. 1370, French

Geoffrey de la Tour Landry (ca. 1320-91?) was a
nobleman from Anjou in France who saw some action
in the Hundred Years’ War against England. He served at
several sieges and battles between the 1340s and 1370s
as a company leader. Nothing is known of his education
except that he certainly was well-read in French, and
possibly also in Latin. He himself owned a collection
of works including the Bible and chronicles of France,
Greece, and England, and so on.

The Book for the Education of his Daughters, written
around 1370, was composed by Geoffrey for his three
daughters. While it concentrated on moral topics, it
underlined the necessity of providing formal instruction

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to daughters and other female dependents. For Geoffrey,
an educated woman, a woman who had learned to read
and who had studied Scripture and other appropriate
writings, was someone who could effect change and
prevent injustice. A woman who was educated could also
better retain her own honour. He gave the example of a
lady called Delbora, who was well-educated and a person
to whom people came for counsel. Her husband was a
cruel and evil man but, because of her own learning, she
was able to mollify him and ensure that he treated his
people well. A literate woman was, therefore, an asset.
This approach directly opposes Philippe of Navarre’s
horror of educated women, with the terrible possibility
that women might be able exchange letters with lovers.
While Geoffrey did not insist on teaching women to write,
he felt that women should be able to take their place in the
world as well-informed and morally-trained participants.

The Book for the Education of his Daughters had an
extraordinarily successful afterlife. Written originally
in French, it was widely read in aristocratic circles.
Unlike Pierre Dubois’s On the Recovery of the Holy Land,
Geoffrey de la Tour Landry’s work is preserved in at
least twenty-one medieval manuscripts. It was translated
into English twice in the fifteenth century, including by
William Caxton who printed his English edition in 1484.
It was also translated into German as Der Ritter vom Turn
and printed in Basel in 1493. An edition history like this
indicates The Book for the Education of his Daughters was
in demand by the noble and bourgeois book buyers who
drove manuscript and early-printed book production in
the later Middle Ages.

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Anonymous

The Commendation of the Clerk (De
commendatione cleri), 1347-65, Latin

We have looked at many authors so far whose personal
biographies are lacking in detail. The author of The
Commendation of the Clerk, however, is completely
anonymous. This treatise appeared in Lynn Thorndike’s
rather wonderful University Records and Life in the
Middle Ages in 1944, a collection of source documents
that revealed the everyday experiences of life in medieval
universities. Working from a single known manuscript
(Vatican, BAV, Pal. Lat. 1252), Thorndike suggested
that the author was a German cleric who attended the
University of Paris. It is easy to suppose, then, that the
anonymous author received an education very similar to
what he described in his Commendation.

The treatise belongs in a subsection of educational
literature directed at boys who were preparing for clerical
orders. Guillaume de Tournai’s early-thirteenth-century
On the Instruction of Boys (De institutione puerorum) also
provided advice for the same type of pupil, boys from
non-elite backgrounds who were attending schooling
for the expressed purpose of becoming clergy. Both
are directly influenced by Pseudo-Boethius’s On the
Teaching of School. The Commendation of the Clerk is
very entertainingly written, and represented the further
growth of interest in the practical methods of providing
elementary and grammar education. Its focus on the
mundane aspects of instruction revealed information

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on how pupils were viewed as individuals and on how
a teacher could tailor their approach in order to teach
efficiently each boy under their tutelage. In some ways,
this treatise marked a return to discussion of ‘normal’
classroom teaching that Quintilian considered in his
work. Neither Quintilian nor his much later German
colleague taught in the exclusive atmosphere of a royal
or noble court. And while Quintilian was indeed teaching
Roman elites, he was doing so in a group context and with
a specific goal in mind, the training of public men. The
anonymous author of the Commendation also discussed
larger-group teaching with a similarly explicit goal, the
training of clerics. Furthermore, the anonymous author,
like Quintilian, clearly had real-life experience as a pupil
and as a teacher, and his advice is original, direct, and
relatively unencumbered with quotes.

Jean Gerson

For the Boys of the Church of Paris (Pro pueris
ecclesiae Parisiensis), ca. 1400, Latin

A.B.C. for Simple People (A.B.C. des simples gens),
ca. 1401, French

To the Tutor of the Dauphin (Au précepteur du
Dauphin), 1417, Latin

Jean Gerson (1363-1429) was the kind of boy that
Philippe de Navarre was writing about when he said that
through education, ‘the son of a poor man can become a
great prelate’.’* While perhaps not destitute, he came from
a peasant background in the Ardennes region of northern

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AUTHORS AND WorRKS | 33

France. Again, we know nothing of his education. We do
know, however, that his family was intensely religious, and
that three of his brothers became Celestine monks, while
four of his sisters followed a religious life within their own
home. We also know that his village, the village of Gerson,
was owned by the abbey of Saint-Remy at Rheims and it is
likely that an intelligent boy (whose parents were happy
to spare him) could attend school and catch the eye of the
local ecclesiastical authorities. At fourteen, the typical
age to begin university-level studies in the fourteenth
century, he arrived at the Collége de Navarre at Paris. This
was the starting point of a brilliant career as a theologian,
a writer, and eventually Chancellor of the University of
Paris. He was deeply involved in the theological and
ecclesiastical affairs of the time, including his campaign to
resolve the Papal Schism. He presided over the Council
of Constance (1414-18) and its condemnation of Jan Hus.
On top of all of this, he condemned Jean Petit’s notorious
attempts to justify the murder of the Duke of Orleans by
the Burgundian party and thus brought the displeasure of
John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Gerson eventually
withdrew from public life and, after a few years in exile,
lived out the last decade of his life at the church of Saint-
Paul in Lyon.

Gerson was a prolific writer on the subject of education.
Not only did he write a lot about education, he also wrote
about it in so many different ways. He wrote letters and
statutes for schools. He wrote poems and proverbs.’ He
wrote weighty treatises and simplified catechisms. And
he wrote both in Latin and in French, intending that
his texts should reach the maximum number of readers.

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Gerson’s pedagogical works are impressive because they
provide insight into several types of medieval education.
His ‘charter’ for the choirboys at the cathedral of Notre
Dame at Paris provided detailed information on what
such children learned and how they were cared for. His
letter to the Dauphin’s tutor describes the instruction he
felt was required for a future king, and included a detailed
list of books that he should read. Additionally, he did not
neglect those on the lower end of the social scale with his
works on elementary education in the vernacular, and
addressed his ‘catechism’ to all the boys and girls, and
all the people, both great and little in the eyes of society.
Like the anonymous author of the Commendation of the
Clerk, he wrote clearly and simply. Rather than relying on
quotations and florilegia, he sought to engage his readers
directly and not merely overwhelm them with evidence
of his intellect. He played many roles within his works.
He acted as an educational consultant to the Dauphin
(much like Vincent of Beauvais and Giles of Rome),
writing to his tutor but never engaging with the pupil
himself. He created practical guides for the instruction of
future clerics, in the same vein as the anonymous German
author and Guillaume de Tournai. But he also was the
religious pedagogue, crafting accessible lessons on faith
for an increasingly literate society.

While we know Gerson would have conducted
classes at the University of Paris, he was best known as
an advocate for the University and its administrator. For
example, he was made Chancellor at the age of thirty-
two, only three years after he received his doctorate in
theology. His writings clearly demonstrate, however, that

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AUTHORS AND WorKS | 35

he had a strong interest in pedagogy and in elementary
pedagogy at that. This interest is probably the basis of an
unsubstantiated claim regarding his time in Lyon. Many
biographers have asserted that, at the collegial church
of Saint-Paul, he held a school for local children in his
retirement, teaching them elementary literacy and the
articles of faith. Unfortunately, there is no firm evidence
from archival sources, and even in his obituary (recorded
by his colleagues at Saint-Paul), he was described as
Chancellor of the University of Paris and preeminent
theologian. On the other hand, we cannot rule out such
activity. There was, at the very least, a school for choirboys
at Saint-Paul, and it is not impossible to imagine that
Gerson may have enjoyed engaging with these pupils.’
For the time being, without any conclusive documentary
evidence, such a claim must remain a theory.

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini
(Pius IT)

On the Education of Boys (De liberorum
educatione), 1450, Latin

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-64) is probably the
author about whom we know most, in terms of the
kind of man he was. He wrote an autobiography, his
Commentaries, which not only describes much of his
life but is a rare first-person account by a reigning pope.
Piccolomini was another example of a poorer boy ‘made
good’, not through a life’s career in the Church but
through the practice of humane letters. He was born into

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36 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

a noble family in a village in the territory of Siena. His
father had been brought up at the ducal court of Milan
but bad luck and the seizure of aristocratic assets by the
government of Siena effectively left his family in penury.
He helped his father work the land and he played with
village children so his childhood was not unlike that of
a fifteenth-century peasant. Nevertheless, he still had
an edge over his peers in the village. His parents were
literate so his father in particular was able to teach him.
He also received some instruction from the local priest.
Piccolomini’s break, however, was when he was eighteen.
His aunt lived in Siena and had enough wealth to offer her
nephew room and board in order to allow him to attend
university at Siena. This was four years later than most
students began their university careers: for example, as
mentioned above Jean Gerson entered the university at
Paris at fourteen.’* Piccolomini had to do some serious
catching-up and studied relentlessly in order to do so,
including nearly burning himself to death when he fell
asleep over his books one night. He eventually became
a teacher in Siena and Florence, and a writer. His most
famous work was a saucy epistolary novel in Latin, The
History of the Two Lovers, which was very popular in the
fifteenth century. He then became secretary to a number
of senior churchmen and the Council of Basel (which ran
from 1431 to 1449), and eventually entered the service of
the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick HI made him poet
laureate. He took holy orders in 1447 at the ripe age of
forty-two, at which point he was made bishop of Trieste.
He was transferred to the bishopric of Siena in 1450, made
a cardinal in 1456, and elected pope as Pius II in 1458. An

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AUTHORS AND WorRKS | 37

impressive feat given his childhood and his past life as a
bawdy novelist.

For Piccolomini, education was certainly his salvation,
and he believed that it was essential for being a successful
man ofthe world and man of the Church. In 1450, he wrote
an educational treatise for the teenaged King Ladislas of
Hungary, who resided, like Piccolomini, at the imperial
court at Vienna. It is a classic example of a Renaissance
educational treatise, dedicated to a young person of elite
status for whom humanist instruction was de rigueur.
On the Education of Boys is a particularly valuable
contribution to this subject as it is written by an Italian
humanist for a non-Italian context. Other Renaissance
theorists such as Vergerio and Guarino were writing for
Italian princelings, who were entirely surrounded by the
politics and culture of the Italian Renaissance. Ladislas
was not among them. He had to prepare to be a defender
of Christianity against the inroads of the Ottoman Turks
in both action and thought, so Piccolomini’s advice
changed to deal with the realities of Central European
rulership. It is, therefore, more explicitly militaristic than
other educational treatises of this period. Piccolomini
also engaged with the criticism of Italian humanism
levelled by some in the German cultural milieu, who saw
such instruction as, at best, useless, or at worst, godless.
On the Education of Boys was a treatise designed to bring
humanistic educational practices, which had been shaped
over a century on the Italian peninsula, over the Alps to a
new, occasionally hostile, audience. Piccolomini, writing
in the aftermath of the rediscovery of the complete
version of Quintilian’s Education of an Orator (which he

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38 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

quotes), sought to consciously integrate classical and
medieval educational traditions.

Schooling in Medieval Literature

While I have concentrated on didactic, prescriptive
literature (works that were intentionally written to
give advice on how to educate children), depictions of
medieval schoolrooms and their inhabitants appear in
the poetry, romances, and fond memoirs of the Middle
Ages. And these too may provide information on life for
teachers and pupils alike. For example, Jean Froissart in
his poem Un Galant de douze ans — A Courtly Lover at
Twelve — recounts the treats and gifts he would give to
win the favour of the little girls at school, such as pins or
an apple or pear.'* But this is not just a sweet memory in
a nice little ditty: instead, it tells us that Froissart appears
to have attended school with girls. This sort of mixed
schooling conflicts with traditional interpretations of
both the prescriptive literature and the documentary
evidence but may indeed have been the case in smaller
schools and less-populated areas.

Among memoirs of the Middle Ages, those of Claude
Belliévre also give us a brief but surprisingly informative
glimpse of his elementary education. As a future luminary
of both municipal and royal administrations in sixteenth-
century Lyon, he was educated in Toulouse and in Italy.
His first lessons, however, were given to him on his family
estate just outside Lyon by ‘a good labourer called Ragot,
who knew how to read’.”” Again, this is a short remark in a
much larger work but it tells us that even for a prominent

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AUTHORS AND WorRKS | 39

bourgeois, professional family such as the Belliévres,
agricultural workers could act as teachers for their
children. Ragot was not only literate but literate enough to
teach — and may well have extended his services beyond
the family of his employers to the children of other
peasants and country people. The episode is a reminder
that literacy was not only present in urban areas but was
possessed — and likely desired — in the countryside too.'®

Probably the most famous depiction of an elementary
school in medieval imaginative literature is in Chaucer’s
“The Prioress’s Tale’ from The Canterbury Tales. Known
for its anti-Semitism and perpetuation of blood libel, the
story revolves around a schoolboy who is killed by Jewish
people in a city in Asia. Of interest to us is the description
of the boy’s experience at school where children were
‘taught to sing and read’ as ‘was customary there’.”” Our
ill-fated hero was seven, learning from his ‘primer’, and
still had no understanding of Latin. This suggests that he
was still learning his alphabet and syllables and perhaps
memorising prayers and thus agrees with much of what
we know from contemporary records. Furthermore, he
is distracted by other, older pupils learning to sing the
hymn Alma redemptoris. He asks one of these older boys
to translate the words and is given a vague summary of the
content because...

That’s all that I can tell you of the matter,
I’m learning singing, and don’t know much
grammar.”

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40 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

This tells us that children at different levels were being
taught in the same room and that an understanding of the
Latin language was not necessarily the primary goal at this
stage in elementary education. The one-room school was
indeed a feature of the Middle Ages and beyond, as can
be seen in woodcuts from the sixteenth century from the
Low Countries and Germany — where dozens of pupils of
differing ages and (sometimes) sexes are being instructed
in different subjects in different parts of the same space.”!

These three examples are a taste of the information
available from literary representations of medieval
schooling. Not only do these match the documentary
sources available but they also overlap with the
prescriptive literature. More research is needed in this
area but a good start is Daniéle Alexandre-Bidon and
Marie-Théreése Lorcin’s book on medieval childhood and
education which uses a cross-section of literary sources.”

As has been stated before, the selection presented here
is not a comprehensive list of medieval literature on
education. It has left out some important works, such
as Alexander Neckham’s Sacerdos ad altare, written in
England around 1210, with its exhortations towards
corporal punishment — ‘without scourges and whips
there is no means of correction’ — and its extremely
useful recommendations on textbooks.”* There is no real
discussion of the treatises written by important Italian
pedagogues, Pier Paolo Vergerio’s The Character and
Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth (1402-03) and Battista

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AUTHORS AND Works | 41

Guarino’s.A Programme of Teaching and Learning (1459).
We have only scratched the surface of Jean Gerson’s
pedagogical writings, and have not even mentioned his
On Leading the Young to Christ (De parvulis ad Christum
trahendis) or his Little Book of Proverbs for Schoolchildren
(Livret-proverbes pour écoliers). This side of Gerson’s
output deserves a great deal more attention than it has
received in the past. This present little book, however, is
intended to demonstrate the kind of information that is
available in works like these. It is meant as a starting point
for more in-depth studies of educational literature, both
as sources for theoretical ideas and everyday instructional
practice. The following sections will look at some of the
common subjects that educational literature addressed
throughout the Middle Ages.

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II
The Beginning and
End of Elementary and

Grammar Education

THE MEDIEVAL DISCUSSION THAT EXAMINES WHEN
children were supposed to begin formal schooling was
dominated by the concept of the ages of man. While this
idea was widely written about and commented upon, the
main authority on this idea was Isidore of Seville (ca. 560-
636). His definition of the ages of man, as laid out in his
Etymologies, both reflected then current traditions and
served as the pattern for later writers. Life was divided
up into six stages of varying lengths: infantia, pueritia,
adolescentia, iuventus, aetas senioris, and senectus. It
is, of course, the first three of these ‘ages’ that we are
interested in here. Each of these was seven years long;
thus, infantia lasted from birth until the age of seven,
pueritia lasted from seven until fourteen years of age,
and adolescentia stretched from fourteen until the age of

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44 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

twenty-one.” It was during these stages, specifically the
second one, that elementary and grammar instruction
was supposed to take place. Most medieval commentators
on education had fixed ideas on when this would begin,
loosely based on the concept that certain activities were
appropriate to certain ages. For example, when John of
Salisbury described Bernard of Chartres’s teaching of
Latin composition, he used the word puer or boy when
referring to Bernard’s pupils. Authors do not appear
to have been casual about the use of phrases relating to
age.”° While infantia might have represented the home
and the control and care of the mother or other females of
the household, pueritia represented, especially for boys,
a period of preparation for adulthood, characterised by
apprenticeship and school. This approach — that is, of a
defined age for the beginning of education — is frequently
discussed in educational treatises.

Not all the writers who discussed when a child should
begin formal schooling agreed absolutely with the
Isidorian partition between infantia and pueritia. Only
one, the author of the Commendation, agreed that seven
was the age to start. Quintilian, on the other hand, felt
that seven was a good age to start school but should not
be prescriptive, stating ‘that no age should be without
interest’.*” Parents, nurses, and pedagogues (tutors)
all had a role to play in the formation of a child’s mind.
Quintilian spends a certain amount of time discussing the
importance of domestic influences on a nascent orator.
Educated parents and well-spoken nurses contributed
a great deal towards a child’s development. Pedagogues
(private tutors who were often employed in addition

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ELEMENTARY & GRAMMAR EDUCATION | 45

to sending the child to a master) and slaves should
acknowledge their own short-comings in their knowledge
and so on.”* His focus was on ensuring that the time in life
when memorisation came easily should not be wasted:

Let us therefore not waste the earliest years,
especially as the elements of reading and
writing are entirely a matter of memory,
which not only already exists in little
children, but is at its most retentive.”

He does mention that seven was the generally agreed time
to begin school but he himself believed that adherence
to such a specific point was unnecessary. Both Philippe
of Navarre and Giles of Rome concurred that formal
education should start at a young, but undefined, age.
Navarre calls on parents to set their sons to training for
their intended vocations as soon as possible:

You put the child to learn whatever
occupation [...], and one must commence as
early as one can.”

Giles of Rome concentrated on the importance of learning
languages (that is, Latin) as early as possible, stating
that those who did not learn it during their youth never
achieved fluency.*! This ambiguity of advice may have
had two causes: the Isidorian scheme may have been so
deeply entrenched that it was a given that children would
begin formal schooling at seven or that the precise age of
commencement was not seen as being standard across

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46 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

every child and every situation. The important thing was
to get children started at school at a sufficiently young
age to be able to exploit their youthful memory and to
acclimatise them to the rigours of the classroom. Only
three commentators recommended a precise age to begin
school. The anonymous author of the Commendation was
alone in his promotion of the supposed ideal of seven.
In his exhortation to prospective clerics, he stated that
those of ‘seven summers’ were ‘ready for apprenticeship
to letters’. He proceeded to repeat this piece of advice
twice:

The true teacher of boys ought to consider
carefully the different individualities of his
pupils, for they come at seven, as the age of
infancy is most often reckoned, to receive
the first rudiments.”

He mentioned it again when discussing the elementary
curriculum. For this anonymous author, writing so
particularly about non-elite elementary and grammar
education, beginning school at seven was fixed in both
tradition and practice. Nowhere does he suggest that
formal instruction ofany kind should occur before this age.
It is interesting to compare this with the recommendations
of Philippe of Navarre who proposes that parents should
teach their children their prayers and the articles of faith
from as young an age as possible. It is likely that this is
the actual experience of the boys attending the schools
written about by the anonymous author but he himself
is silent on this possibility. Vincent of Beauvais, in his

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ELEMENTARY & GRAMMAR EDUCATION | 47

Speculum doctrinale, stated that boys should begin formal
education at the age of six. He appeared to accept that this
was relatively early; however, as he urged that the pupil
should be taught slowly and methodically. Certainly, both
the anonymous author of the Commendation and Vincent
of Beauvais believed that a child beginning school should
not be overburdened or strained. This reflects Quintilian’s
remark that too much pressure on the very young might
very well have a detrimental effect on their academic
progress:

I am not so careless of age differences as to
think that the very young should be forced
on prematurely, and that set tasks should
be demanded of them. For one of the first
things to take care of is that the child, who is
not yet able to love study, should not come
to hate it and retain his fear of the bitter taste
he has experienced even beyond his first
years.**

Dubois, the last of our authors to stipulate an exact age to
begin schooling, takes an opposite stance. His educational
programme was influenced by relatively recent political
and military events. Given that he wrote his treatise in
the first decade of the fourteenth century, the fall of Acre
in 1291 still cast a shadow. The pupils in his proposed
schools were to be a new type of crusader and Dubois
certainly felt that the sooner they began their training and
education, the better. Boys and girls were to be selected
at the age of four or five ‘by a wise philosopher’ who

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48 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

could ascertain their future potential.** As discussed in
the section on the organisation of the school day, these
selectees were immersed in an intensive educational
curriculum, the goal of which was to create an army of
colonists ready to be sent to the Holy Land as soon as
possible. Dubois explained why he sought to speed up the
educational process as follows:

For the reasons cited it is well that youth
progress so rapidly in the sciences that they
come to practical experience in the full
vigour and with the expectation of a long life
in accordance with the presumption of law
and nature.*°

In comparison to the recommendations of other authors,
this appears hasty. The desired outcome was not simply an
educational or intellectual one but a geopolitical one that
affected and, indeed, distorted the entire process. While
the Isidorian ideal that seven was the border between
infantia and pueritia is both convenient and attractive
as a theory, there is little in other educational treatises
to reinforce this as an absolute age when children began
formal schooling.

Likewise, there is almost no discussion about when
elementary or grammar education would end. In many
ways, this was a more tenuous concept. Medieval
commentators did not delineate the period during which
someone was educated in a formal setting as a fixed length
of time. There was no suggestion that elementary and
grammar instruction would take seven full years, except in

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ELEMENTARY & GRAMMAR EDUCATION | 49

the work of the author of the Commendation. The central
argument for this flexible and less-constrictive approach
was this: pupils were deemed to have mastered a certain
subject when they had, in fact, mastered it. Only then
could they move on to the next text or the next subject
or to a higher institution of learning. Most commentators
did not see and did not have to see the instructional
process as a race to meet any kind of target regarding age
and a pre-specified level of academic achievement. This
attitude may have its basis in the idea that not all children
learned at the same rate. Developmental landmarks were
personal things, particular to the individual child, and
medieval pedagogical writers seem to have accepted
this. This will be discussed in more detail later on, in the
section on natural ability.

Some authors, however, did state when this stage of
education should end in their opinion. Dubois, as a result
of an early start and an accelerated curriculum, stated that
children should have finished the entirety of the course
in grammar at the age of twelve at the latest.” At this
point, boys would be sent to the ‘schools of logic’ and
be hearing formal lectures by fourteen.** The author of
the Commendation recommended that fourteen was the
proper time to finish the full grammar curriculum. By
that age, the pupils would be ready for the more difficult
subjects of logic and rhetoric:

For then the light of reason begins to gleam
in him and then is the time to propound the
involutions of dialectic to the brighter and

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50 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

better pupils together with the examples of
fine rhetoric.”

It is clear that fixed-term courses in elementary and
grammar studies were not envisioned by medieval
theorists. Apart from the anonymous author of the
Commendation and Pierre Dubois, authors were vague
about when such instruction should begin and end. In
fact, they viewed this concept as being inherently variable.
They appear to have been aware of the numerous factors
that might advance or delay the beginning of formal
education such as financial success or pressure, physical
proximity to a school or the character of the children
themselves. Indeed, even amongst the authors discussed
in this work, we have an example of a would-be student
whose educational career did not smoothly progress from
grammar instruction to university at any kind of fixed age.
While most young men started at the studio in Siena at
the age of fourteen, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, noted
humanist and future pope, started at the age of eighteen.
His entry had been delayed due to his family’s financial
difficulties and it had only been through the offer of free
board and lodgings from a relative that he ever made it
there at all.

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If]
Organising the School
Day and Schoolroom

TIMETABLING AND CLASSROOM SET-UP WERE DAILY
practicalities of teaching and learning that attracted the
opinions of pedagogical commentators in the Middle
Ages. Several writers outlined their own concept of
what should happen in the schoolroom and when it
should happen. Some went so far as to describe how the
classroom itself should appear. From these suggestions,
we can construct what the school day might have looked
like and how theorists felt that their suggestions affected
learning in a positive way.

There is surprisingly little information about precisely
what time in the day teaching was supposed to start.
Even Quintilian and Gerson, usually so loquacious, are
silent on the timing. What information there is, however,
points to a fairly standard pattern for the school day that
had begun to emerge by the later Middle Ages. Teaching
took place throughout the daylight hours." Class length

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52 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

and subject changed depending on the season. Evening
sessions were common when the stretch in the summer
evenings allowed. There were specific times for learning
new material, revision, examination, and review of
behaviour. The medieval school day was supposed to be
well organised, with compartmentalised activities and
daily goals. In schools attached to religious houses and
churches, terce or another morning service might have
signalled the start of school.*! It is, of course, likely that
classes began relatively early in the morning and made the
most of the daylight hours. According to commentators,
the school day was relatively full, especially for those who
were boarding at school.

Pierre Dubois, in his Recovery of the Holy Land, lays
out a particularly intense day for the children undergoing
his unique vision of education.” Once they had finished
the introductory course consisting of the alphabet and
syllables, the pupils studying the elementary grammar
course had to cover the Psalter, singing, and Donatus
during the day. The singing lesson was to take place
during ‘the third part of the day’ and Donatus was to be
studied ‘at other hours’. It is difficult to understand what
Dubois meant by the third part of the day. It could mean
terce or nine o’clock in the morning or it could signify the
afternoon (if the day is divided into four parts: morning,
lunchtime, afternoon, evening). This can be compared to
Gerson’s plan for the choirboys of Paris. He stated that
grammar should be studied by the boys from morning
to lunch (probably 9am to 12pm) and ‘from the return
from vespers up to dinner’. This later class undoubtedly
changed its time and possibly even its length depending

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ORGANISING THE SCHOOL Day & SCHOOLROOM | 53

on the time of year but would have occurred sometime
between 4pm and 7pm. If Dubois’s ‘third part of the day’
is understood as 9am, then this differs from Gerson, who
assigned that period to grammatical studies and who
suggests that this allocation of the morning to grammar
was the ‘hour more usual for such things’. * According
to Gerson, singing, a subject of paramount importance
for choirboys, should be taught at unspecified ‘set hours’
and in a way that did not impinge on the grammar
curriculum.’ While Gerson’s day does not appear to
change depending on the age and academic advancement
of the choirboys, Dubois’s day changes radically when his
budding crusaders begin reading the elementary Latin
works and studying more advanced grammatical texts.
The day also differed depending on the time of year.
During the summer, Cato and other minor authors were
introduced in ‘four long lessons a day, or as much as his
natural capacity can stand; let [the pupil] not go to sleep
over these.’° This would strongly suggest that this was an
intense reading course and that it would not be out of the
ordinary for pupils to become exhausted or bored. During
the winter, grammar (probably Alexander of Villedieu’s
Doctrinale and the Graecisimus) was studied.” The
evenings were given over to Latin composition.

While Dubois’s pedagogical blueprint was radical
and extremely challenging for prospective pupils, there
was a reason for this and it does appear to mimic other
descriptions and prescriptions of the medieval school day.
Dubois’s idea was to speed up the entire course of studies
so that children could move on quickly to further training

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and not spend their healthiest, most robust years in the
classroom when they could be recovering the Holy Land:

It is well that youth progress so rapidly in
the sciences that they come to practical
experience in full vigour and with the
expectation of a long life in accordance with
the presumption of law and nature.

Yet, despite the unique and bellicose ambition behind
Dubois’s recommendation, intense courses of study were
part of the wider pedagogical culture of the later Middle
Ages. Several aspects of Bernard of Chartres’s classroom
practice (as described by John of Salisbury) were similar
to those advocated by Dubois. Bernard’s evening revision
course in grammar was also relatively intensive:

if anyone were to take part in it for an entire
year, provided he were not a dullard, he
would become thoroughly familiar with the
correct method of speaking and writing.”

Bernard’s students may have required this acceleration
owing to financial pressures or, more likely, to limited
time available, since many were attached to other religious
institutions that would have required their presence. As
in Dubois’s advice, Bernard also had his students practise
their Latin composition on a daily basis:

A further feature of Bernard’s method was to
have his disciples compose prose and poetry

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ORGANISING THE SCHOOL Day & SCHOOLROOM | 55

every day, and exercise their faculties in
mutual conferences [...]*°

It is likely that these exercises took place at the same
time (that is, in the evening) as Bernard’s ‘declination’ or
‘philosophical collation’. This was when Bernard took his
students through their grammatical paces as described
above. For Dubois, the evening was also given over to
Latin composition; indeed, this activity was completely
restricted to the evenings.*! The evening in Gerson’s
scheme was when boys who misbehaved during the day
were punished by the master:

And these failures will be able to be recorded
[...], and at the end of the day presented to
the master, so that he may frequently correct
failings.»

The end of the day, in other words, was reserved for
review of both what the pupils had learned and their
conduct. Even the composition exercises recommended
by Dubois were a form of revision and the more advanced
grammar instruction given by Bernard was presented as
reflection and discussion on the topics covered during
the day.* Only 4lfric Bata suggested that the revision
exercises may have taken place in the morning:

Read and memorise your assignments so
that first thing tomorrow morning you can
recite quickly and then learn more from our
teacher.*

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56 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

It is unclear if Dubois, John of Salisbury, and Gerson felt
that the evening review was part of the school day proper
or if it was something extra. It is also unclear if these
writers considered the practicalities of teaching (and
especially the physical task of reading and writing) after
dark. It is likely that nightfall brought the school day to a
close and that only in the most lavishly-funded schools,
such as those funded by the wealth of the Templars in
Dubois’s fantasy, could lessons have been expected to
continue.*

We only gleam information about a pupil’s day from
monastic sources, specifically from A®lfric Bata’s scenes
set in a late Anglo-Saxon monastery. In Colloquy 5, a
master questions his pupils about how they have spent
their day. The boys of course report that they have been
hard at work and on their best behaviour.

>,
“

Before prime (6am) — writing

Between prime and terce (6am-—9am) — writing
Toilet

Sang the seven penitential psalms (clearly in their
own classroom)

Sang prayers in church

Participated in Mass

Mealtime in the refectory

Toilet again (this time singing their ‘verse’)

Back at school and ready to learn*®

\?
“

7
~

>,
“

It is unclear exactly how much of the day these boys were
relating to their teacher. Nicholas Orme suggests that
this is their entire day but perhaps it simply covers their

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ORGANISING THE SCHOOL Day & SCHOOLROOM | 57

morning, with classes proper only beginning after terce
followed by a full Mass (after 10am). That unfortunately
does not explain the mealtime but perhaps it was a mid-
morning snack after an admittedly active morning for the
boys.*”

The school day, however, was not one long grind of
lessons and constant reviews stretching into the evening.
Pedagogical commentators were not so harsh as to deny
school children rest and holiday. Vincent of Beauvais,
though very strict in other areas, accepted that children
should not be sent to school every day and most other
writers (with the notable exception of Pierre Dubois)
felt that some sort of daily recess and play was essential
for the effective instruction of the young.* Quintilian is
eloquent on this subject:

Everyone must be given some relaxation,
not only because there is nothing that can
stand perpetual strain — even things which
are without sense or life need to be relaxed
by periods of rest in order to preserve their
strength — but also because study depends
on the will to learn, and this cannot be
forced.”

This example is followed by both Jean Gerson and the
anonymous author of the Commendation of the Clerk. The
latter sees the usefulness of active play in reviving the
flagging spirits of the hard-working schoolboy:

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Nor should the scholars be always kept
intent upon their books and writing tablets,
but they should be given an occasional
recess and set at suitable games, so that their
spirits may be raised and their blood stirred
by the pleasure of play. For thus the boys’
minds which before were fatigued by the
tedium of classes are refined and refreshed.”

While Gerson agrees with the necessity of games and
play, he is more concerned with the nature of the games
that boys should be allowed to indulge in:

Furthermore, let all games be forbidden
to them that derive from greed or sexual
impropriety or degrading shouting, or from
anger, and rancour, as is the game of dice or
risk and all similar things, let whatever be
exercised in moderation [...] play with the
hoop, shun the dice.”

In this, Gerson reflects the pronouncements of both
Quintilian and the author of the Commendation. Quintilian
recommends that learning be combined into play:

There are even some games which are
useful for sharpening the wits, for example
competitions in which they ask one another
all sorts of little questions.”

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ORGANISING THE SCHOOL Day & SCHOOLROOM | 59

Suitable games were allowed but anything that
encouraged gambling or exultation in violence was to be
avoided. This is of particular interest when one considers
the frequency of school-sanctioned cock-fights in the
Middle Ages. In William FitzStephen’s description of
London in the twelfth century, boys from various schools
— with the blessing and participation of their teachers —
would bring their fighting birds to a prearranged place on
Shrove Tuesday and devote the morning to watching.”
The subject of play within the context of a school is
certainly one of those moments where the fine ideas of
theorists were not always followed on the ground.
Gerson also gives an opinion about when playtime
and periods of relaxation should take place. He suggests
that after lunch and dinner ‘when [the boys] are less able
for other serious things’. The other authors are silent
on when recreation should take place. Perhaps it was
dependant on how the class was progressing, the difficulty
of the subject being taught, and how the pupils were
responding. Given the general flexibility of the medieval
school day with regards to when it began and ended,
the teachers could decide themselves on the timing of
recess. This precise situation appears in the Colloquies
of AZlfric Bata when the master allows the boys to play
outside with their sticks, hoops, and balls (just as Gerson
suggested) because they had time before vespers and had
already memorised their set assignments. Other breaks
were provided for lunch and dinner and, in schools where
pupils were also boarders, naps were also timetabled. It is
likely that children who attended schools adjacent to their
homes would have returned there in order to eat, thus

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60 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

providing some exercise and respite from the lessons.
Nevertheless, recess was expected to be built into the
medieval school day.

The organisation of the physical schoolroom, however,
was not so widely discussed in pedagogical literature.
There was no such thing as the perfect space in which to
hold a class. Most writers do not even consider this notion
and the archival evidence backs this up.” School was held
wherever was convenient. A room and some benches
were all that was required. In the context of religious
institutions, the schoolroom could be anywhere. Even a
shady tree in more sunny climates was acceptable. There
were, occasionally, tangible provisions made for teaching
spaces. At Saint-Paul in Lyon, school appears to have been
heldinaroom above the chapel of Sainte-Catherine. At the
cathedral of Saint-Jean in Lyon, a designated classroom
and dormitory was only created in the 1390s and at Notre
Dame in Paris in the 1450s. Only one commentator takes
the time to describe what the perfect classroom was, in
his opinion. The anonymous author of the Commendation
of the Clerk goes into some detail about the construction
and layout of the schoolroom.® Firstly, there must be
two classrooms, if possible, a summer one and a winter
one. The summer one should be well-ventilated and face
north while the winter one should be tightly enclosed so
that it can be more effectively heated ‘with burning coals
according to the custom of the region’. The author states
that some masters actually build their schools into the

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ORGANISING THE SCHOOL Day & SCHOOLROOM | 61

slope of a hill and panel them with planks of fir or pine.
Given that the anonymous author of the Commendation
of the Clerk was likely from Germanic lands (possibly
Austria), his advice here is clearly tailored for teachers
who might be in a position to oversee the building of a
dedicated schoolhouse in a rural or semi-rural area where
land and materials were freely available and where said
schoolhouse could be easily built into the side of a hill.
His discussion here also raises some questions about his
intended audience. Did he write for teachers who were
venturing into Central Europe in much the same way
as later educators would into the American West? That
question cannot be answered but it is clear that such
principles of design would not have been on the minds of
most medieval teachers.

In the often crowded towns and cities of the Middle
Ages, space was at a premium.” It appears that, in reality,
most schooling took place in one room where all the
pupils, regardless of age or level of advancement, were
seated on benches, and that sometimes class took place
in the house or the very room where the teacher lived.
Guilbert of Nogaret’s first teacher (beyond his mother)
taught a small group of boys in his own chamber. As for the
decoration of the school, information such as alphabets
and prayers may have been inscribed onto wall charts
or directly onto the walls themselves.” The focus of the
classroom, however, was the teacher, and it is most likely
that pupils gathered around his or her chair. The physical
organisation of the classroom mattered less than the
organisation of the school day to medieval commentators.
The school was not a physical place in the medieval mind

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62 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

but rather the collective of people made up of teachers
and pupils: wherever they gathered was the school.

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Corporal Punishment

THE SUBJECT OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT WAS A
controversial one amongst those who commented on
medieval education. This is surprising considering the
iconography of the teacher in images from the Middle
Ages and Renaissance. The grammar master was almost
always depicted with a switch or a bundle of twigs,
forever poised to deal out lashes for mistakes and bad
behaviour. The image of the teacher was also the image
of a disciplinarian. Some of the pedagogical literature
reinforces this view of medieval education while other
authors opposed the use of violence in the classroom.
Some theorists sought a middle way, struggling between
the necessity for punishment and the fear that such action
might destroy a child’s will to learn. Such differences
in opinions produced vigorous debate. Writers quote
everything from long dead Roman teachers to the Bible
to support their own arguments. They often explicitly
objected to each other’s positions on the subject. The
question of corporal punishment, to spare the rod or not,

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64 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

demonstrates a theoretical dispute that reflects something
of the real medieval classroom, where a narrow line
had to be walked by masters, between abuse and too
much leniency. Both extremes could lead to the loss of
reputation and paying pupils.

Several authors advocated the use of corporal
punishment by medieval teachers but few did so without
suggesting some sort of limitation or moderation.
There is a sense of caution even in the most enthusiastic
endorsements for the practice. Only the rule of
Saint Benedict is unequivocal in promoting corporal
punishment, specifically for children. Adult members
of the monastery were only punished (in an undefined
manner) if they refused to admit that they had made
a mistake in choir. Children, on the other hand, were
subject to immediate physical correction:

If anyone shall have made a mistake in
psalm, responsory, or antiphon or lection
and unless he shall have there and then
humbly made satisfaction before all, let him
be subjected to severe punishment as one
who was unwilling to correct by humility
what by negligence he had done amiss. But
in the case of children, let them, for the like
fault, be whipped.”

Augustine was the most enigmatic when it came to
the question of beating in an educational context. At
first glance, he appears to actively approve of corporal

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 65

punishment, linking it with earthly suffering and
punishment for sinfulness:

I did not love learning and hated being forced
to learn. Since I was forced, good was done
to me, although I myself did not do well. I
would not learn unless I was compelled.
But nobody does well against his will even if
what he does is good [...] But you, Lord [...]
used the mistakes of those who urged me to
study for my advantage. But my own error,
consisting of my unwillingness to learn,
you used for my punishment. This was a
punishment well deserved by one who was
so small a boy but so great a sinner.”

Further on in the Confessions, Augustine even appears
to suggest that corporal punishment has a redemptory
purpose:

Nevertheless, by the dictates of your laws,
O God, compulsion acts to restrain the free
flow of curiosity. These laws are imposed
by torments which range from the canes of
teachers to the sufferings of the martyrs and
have the effect of mingling in us a life-giving
bitterness, which summons us back to You
from the soul-destroying pleasure which
first influenced us to turn our backs on You.”

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The rod of the master was changed, therefore, into
a conduit for salvation, a righteous judgement on
the misdeeds of little children. For Augustine, such
judgement was necessary for the ultimate salvation of the
souls of those who received it but he was less enamoured
of the practice when it came to helping pupils make real
advances in their studies. Augustine’s personal struggles
with the Greek language will be discussed again but we
must consider them here in the context of the academic
efficacy of corporal punishment:

I knew none of the Greek words and I was
unrelentingly driven to learn by savage
threats and punishments. But at one period
of my life, when I was a young child, I knew
no Latin. Yet I learned it without fear or
torture, merely by noticing what went on
around me amid the flattering words of
nurses, the jokes of people who smiled
on me, and the joyful humours of people
who played with me. I learned my own
language, without the pressure of those who
compelled me with punishment.”

The suggestion here was that physical chastisement did
not always function as an effective learning tool. This
ambiguity in Augustine set the tone for the medieval
discussion on punishment in the classroom. What was
good for the soul might not be good for learning and
might indeed erode away the will to learn in children.

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 67

Vincent of Beauvais carried on this uncertainty in
his work on education. At the beginning of his On the
Education of Noble Children, he wrotea lengthy meditation
on Ecclesiasticus 7:25, “Hast thou children? Instruct
them, and bow down their neck from childhood’. Vincent
made full use of the Bible and the Church Fathers in his
consideration of corporal punishment. He quoted biblical
commentary on Jeremiah 6:8, “Through every pain and
scourge you will learn, Jerusalem’.” He quoted Cyprian,
“Teaching is the well-ordered reproof of habits.” His
conclusion, which he returned to several times in his first
chapter alone, was that physical punishment was good for
children:

Not only must the boys be instructed with
words, but also, if it is beneficial, with
whips.”

The theological reason for the importance of corporal
punishment followed directly on from Augustine.
Childhood, by its very nature, was evil and children were
prone to evil and had to be bent or bowed down from
their youth in order to train their souls:

Therefore, since childhood is wild and
insolent towards learning and hesitant about
being well conducted, truly prone to evil,
it is therefore right that, after it was said,
‘teach these’, it is added, ‘and bend them,
from their childhood.”

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Nevertheless, Vincent of Beauvais suggested that too
much bending may break the subject. He quoted from
Book 1 of Quintilian’s The Education of an Orator,
‘For you may break easily what you would correct’.®°
This served as a warning to those who used undue and
immoderate discipline in the classroom. While Vincent
felt it was necessary for the moral health of the child,
just as Augustine had, it could go too far and could be
counterproductive in the classroom. Indeed, he even
dedicated one of the chapters in On the Education of Noble
Children to the subject of moderate coercion (Chapter
XXVI, De cohercionis moderacione) — ‘regarding teaching,
three aspects of punishment are required, namely severity,
clemency and discretion or moderation’.*’ In order to
curb the worst excesses of corporal punishment, Vincent
advocated that punishment be mingled with leniency and,
when punishment was unavoidable, he laid out guidelines
on how best to carry it out. He divides these into method,
timing, and place.** Correct method required good
intention, genuine purpose, and restraint.“ Timing had
to be thought out to prevent unpremeditated punishment
which could lead to the use of excessive force and the loss
of control on the part of the teacher:

Timing should be heeded as well, as
censuring the offending party should not be
employed immediately as if during a rage,
but always be put off to a later suitable time.
For it is read in Proverbs 29: ‘All his spirit’,
that is anger, ‘advances foolishness, wisdom
truly delays and reserves for the future.’ So

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 69

again not all faults should be punished, but
they should be given way to for a later time.

Rage and recklessness with the rod was recognised as a
dangerous consequence of corporal punishment. Vincent
was aware that injury and intemperance were possibilities
but he advised that the teacher leave punishment until
a later time, rather than refrain from chastisement
completely. A later time would allow tempers to cool and
discipline appropriate to the misdemeanour to be handed
down.

Gerson recommended a similar approach. There
were many reasons why choirboys might need to be
reprimanded and Gerson provides a fairly comprehensive
list: speaking French, swearing, lying, deceiving others,
speaking badly, striking another, speaking shamefully or
unchastely, rising from bed late, failing to observe the
Hours or chattering in church. All these things resulted
in a note being made beside the name of the boy on a
list. This list was handed to the master of the school who
would ‘correct failings’ at the end of each day.** Immediate
punishment was only received if a boy struck one of his
fellows. Wrongdoing was dealt with, therefore, in a calm
and controlled fashion. Indeed, in Gerson’s scheme, the
masters of grammar and song who were, presumably,
the ones who recorded the errors of their charges, did
not carry out the sentence. This was given over to their
superior, the master of the school. Ideally, this meant that
any residual anger or embarrassment was removed from
the equation. It also lent a psychological feature to the
disciplinary process. Any pupil who had broken the rules

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70 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

had to wait until evening to receive their punishment.
It is easy to imagine the feelings of foreboding that this
method must have caused. Place was equally important
as time and method. While Gerson’s punishments did not
appear to have taken place in front of the whole host of
boys, Vincent of Beauvais suggested that the public or
private nature of the punishment should match the error:

Finally place must also be observed, mainly
because if the sin should be hidden, the
punishment must be secret [...] However, if
it should be flagrant, correction should be
done in the open.*

Gerson and Vincent differ considerably from what is
depicted in ALlfric Bata’s Colloquies. In Colloquy 28, the
master punishes a boy who has stolen apples from the
monastery, in fact a repeat offender. Not only is the boy
beaten in front of his classmates, but two are enlisted to
actually carry out the punishment.*” Even Vincent, who
embraced the validity of corporal punishment, felt that
limits had to be imposed. Because there was an idea that
punishment could be done in different ways or could have
different purposes, the debate in medieval pedagogical
literature thus acquired substantial nuance. Those who
advocated physical chastisement tended not to do so
without some discussion of the reasons for it or without
the imposition of limits and restraints.

Some authors, however, rejected corporal punishment
completely. These include such luminaries as Quintilian
and Jerome. It is of great interest to examine why a

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 71

classical or medieval teacher would object to the practice.
Firstly, there was the idea that too much abuse and
criticism would cripple a child academically. Fear was
seen as a fickle aid in the teaching process. Piccolomini,
for example, states that boys ‘visited with much criticism
[...] become broken and low-spirited’.** He was, however,
referring to Quintilian when he wrote this. The old
orator was very particular in his opposition to physical
punishment. When correction was too severe it served to
disable all the better faculties of a child:

We should not even admonish that which
is unworthy, the yokes of boys are many
[and] at the same time to fail because of the
severity of correction, they both despair and
grieve and, in the end, they hate and that
hurts the most, as long as they are afraid of
everything, they attempt nothing.”

The central purpose ofthe learning process, the acquisition
of knowledge, was often shown to be threatened by the
use of force. If children could not learn effectively in such
circumstances, then the practice of physical chastisement
had to be set aside.

Secondly, corporal punishment affected the character
and attitude of the pupil. Beatings were not a useful
pedagogical tool if they were employed on a daily basis
for academic mistakes in the classroom. Quintilian and
Piccolomini both felt that it would make certain students
intractable and harden them towards the act of learning.
Piccolomini states:

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Indeed, from blows arises a hatred which
endures even to manhood, yet nothing is
worse for a pupil than to hate his teachers.”

He was clearly referencing Quintilian in this sentiment:

if a boy is so lacking in self-respect that
reproof is powerless to put him right, he will
even become hardened to blows, like the
worst type of slave.”!

Even if the teacher felt that corporal punishment was
necessary, it had the potential to elicit quite the opposite
reaction from the child. Pupils might start to refuse
consciously or subconsciously to learn or to obey as a
form of resistance against discipline. Grudges could be
formed and such feelings could affect the adult lives of
the children in question. Quintilian has a particularly
nuanced perception of the long-term consequences:

Though you may compel a child with blows,
what can you do with a young man who
cannot be threatened like this and who has
more important lessons to learn?”

The implications of corporal punishment were, therefore,
widespread and prolonged. The emotional aftermath was
identified as a serious drawback by pedagogical writers
and Quintilian and Piccolomini clearly believed that the
possibility of accidentally encouraging bad traits in their

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 73

pupils was enough to refrain from the practice of physical
punishment altogether.

Thirdly, some theorists felt that there were other,
better incentives to learning. Encouragement and a little
healthy competition could get better results than fear and
abuse. Positive reinforcement was the basis of Jerome’s
approach to discipline:

You must not scold her if she is somewhat
slow; praise is the best sharpener of wits.”

Quintilian also advocates constant and conscientious
supervision. Punishment was rarely necessary when
someone had made sure that the child did what they were
supposed to do.*! Competition too could prompt children
to learn without any kind of reprimand, physical or verbal.
For Quintilian, word games had the potential to help
pupils without competing in the context of the classroom.
Jerome strongly supported the presence of companions
for Paula, the subject of one of his pedagogical letters.
Despite the fact that Paula was to be brought up in a
sheltered way in order to prepare her as a handmaid of
the Lord, classmates were seen as an important and non-
violent way to encourage her:

Let her have companions too in her lessons,
so that she may seek to rival them and be
stimulated by any praise they win [...] Let
her be glad when she is first and sorry when
she falls behind.”*

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By providing the young girl with peers, Jerome sought to
stimulate the natural tendency towards competition and
rivalry in children and channel the energy it created into
learning. It should also be noted that Jerome was not in
the least upset by the use of ‘bribes’ in encouraging young
children to learn. In both his letter to Laeta and his letter
to Pacatula, liberal rewards of things that might interest
the very young were to be given. For example:

To get her to repeat her lessons in her little
shrill voice she must have a prize of a honey
cake offered to her.*°

Discussion of why physical punishment should not be
implemented shows us ancient and medieval writers
approached the issue with a considerable amount
of nuance and sensitivity. There is a high level of
understanding of how beatings could affect the academic
progress of a pupil as well as their emotional well-being.
Other mechanisms like rewards and the creation of a
competitive environment were actively promoted as
effective pedagogical tools.

There were many authors who promoted a mixed
approach to corporal punishment in the classroom. This
is linked to the concept of natural ability and the personal
traits of individual pupils. While not all children learned
at the same rate, not all children reacted in the same way
to a beating or to a verbal scolding. It is here that the
fear of impairing the academic progress of an individual
child comes into play. Quintilian was the first to voice
this fear and his dictum — ‘as long as they are afraid of

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CORPORAL PUNISHMENT | 75

everything, they attempt nothing’ — made its way into
the work of Vincent of Beauvais, amongst others.” Not
all pupils could be punished and not all crimes merited
physical retribution. The anonymous author of the
Commendation of the Clerk was one such theorist who felt
that chastisement should be tailored to the recipient. For
each character type, a different technique had to be used.
For the ‘frivolous’, those who fought against learning
and the authority of the master, the rod was necessary.
For those who were shy, words would be sufficient.”
Likewise, John of Salisbury recorded that Bernard of
Chartres chose between exhortation and flogging in order
to encourage his students to absorb their lessons.” There
was a clear understanding by medieval teachers that not
everything could be achieved by force and intimidation.
The personality of the child had to be considered as well
as, in the case of Bernard, the nature of the crime:

And if, to embellish his work, someone had
sewed on a patch of cloth filched from an
external source, Bernard, on discovering
this, would rebuke him for his plagiarism,
but would generally refrain from punishing
him. After he had reproved the student [...],
he would, with modest indulgence, bid the
boy to rise to real imitation of the [classical
authors ].!°

It is clear that misbehaviour and delinquency in the
classroom were not tolerated and were swiftly dealt with
by means of corporal punishment. John of Salisbury’s

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story, however, suggests that, at least sometimes, such
punishments were not given out for shortcomings in their
school work. Even the cardinal sin of laziness leading to
plagiarism — when a pupil copied another’s work — was
not countered with the rod. This approach was opposed
by Gerson’s insistence that ‘mistakes’ such as speaking
French would result in some sort of reprimand, though
it is unclear if such a crime was met with words or a
rod.’ It is probable that this mixed approach, adjusting
punishment in terms of the would-be recipient and the
error, was the standard in the medieval classroom.

Punishment and, specifically, corporal punishment
was a subject that provoked a certain intensity of debate
among medieval pedagogical authors. The intricacy of
the discussion and the variety of positions that were
taken across the spectrum of opinion, points to a deep
awareness of what a beating or a flogging might represent
toa child. Proponents and opponents and even those who
presented an ambiguous view of corporal punishment
all sought to construct a rational basis for the adherence
(or not) to the practice. Even those who advocated the
exercise of physical chastisement laid out limits and fail-
safes and accepted that excess was dangerous, both to the
pupil and to the reputation of the teacher.

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V
Natural Ability

ALMOST ALL MEDIEVAL THEORISTS ON EDUCATION
accepted that natural ability was a factor in learning
and teaching. It was recognised that not all children
learned in the same way or at the same speed, that levels
of aptitude varied, and that degrees of interest and
engagement differed radically. Given that the intended
audience of this literature was principally made up of
those who taught rather than pupils themselves, there
was an attempt by some authors to point out the reality
of teaching a mixed-ability group. Some even went so far
as to outline the drawbacks of using the same approach
with each pupil. Though this may seem obvious to anyone
who had ever been a teacher, the fact that the subject
of pupil capacity was discussed in such length and that
recommendations were given to help the school master
indicate that medieval theorists accepted that children
had characteristics and abilities that did not allow for
absolutely standardised methods.

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The first thing that authors tend to discuss when
considering the abilities of pupils was their nature and
characteristics when the children began school. The
physical traits of the children had to be examined and
their actions and personal manners had to be observed by
the teacher. This was supposed to help the teacher predict
a given child’s capacity for learning. Dubois had a roving
‘wise philosopher’, who was tasked with selecting children
of both genders. He had to ‘recognise their probable
natural aptitude for making progress in philosophical
studies’! Their entrance to school therefore depended
on one individual, the ‘wise philosopher’. Dubois stated
that those selected would have ‘heads well shaped and
apt for making progress’.' Physical characteristics
were, therefore, very important in the medieval mind
for judging future success in the classroom. The Pseudo-
Boethian On the Teaching of School, for example, bluntly
rejected any physical ailment in prospective pupils:

The deformed should not be a scholar.!™

The anonymous author of the Commendation also
encouraged teachers to consider four things: ‘the state
of the weather, a normal body, the physical constitution,
and the mental capacity’.'* All three of these writers
felt that bodily health was important. While Dubois
needed physically strong pupils ready for the duties and
deprivations of crusading, the author ofthe Commendation
suggested that the healthier the boy, the better their
endurance within the classroom itself. Learning was not
a physical challenge but good health was still seen as a

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NATURAL ABILITY | 79

desirable attribute. Intellectual and academic talent was
the other characteristic that teachers had to ascertain in
their newest pupils. For Quintilian, the best features to
find in a young child were a good memory and the ability
to imitate:

As soon as a boy is entrusted to him, the
skilled teacher will first spy out his ability
and his nature. In children, the principal sign
of talent is memory. There are two virtues of
memory: quickness of grasp, and accurate
retention. Next comes imitation; this also
is a mark of a teachable nature, provided
that it is exercised on what he is learning,
not on someone’s bearing or walk or some
observable defect.’

These formed the foundation of effective learning. A/lfric
Bata’s master was also fully aware of his pupils’ abilities.
On hearing one boy excusing the others’ lack of progress
in memorising and reciting their work by saying ‘they
don’t have good enough heads to recite every day’, the
teacher replied:

Indeed, I know very well what kind of brains
they have. You shouldn’t say that to me. But
this is your excuse, since you always excuse

them.!”

It was the business of the teacher to know exactly
what kind of children they were dealing with. And that

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evaluation was quickly made by a prospective teacher, as
the author of the Commendation indicates:

The mental capacity of boys in the process
of learning is quickly ascertained. For in
the same kind of composition, some are
found bright, others brighter, and others
brightest of all. So also some are dull, others
duller, and others so dull that their mind is
despaired of.'°

What we find here are two assertions that seem to
contradict each other. Firstly, that a child must be of good
bodily health to be a good pupil and secondly, that mental
ability is the only factor that actually determines a child’s
future academic success. These are not as inconsistent as
they may initially appear. The anonymous author of the
Commendation, for example, is thinking in purely practical
terms. If a child, no matter how bright and brilliant,
cannot come to school because they are frequently ill,
they may not be able to benefit fully from the instruction
on offer. A child possessing of less natural talent but a
strong constitution, however, could at the very least be
eventually compelled to learn the fundamentals of Latin
literacy. Of course, such recommendations do not cast a
favourable light on the contemporary prejudices towards
disability.

Following on from determining children’s abilities,
teachers were advised about how best to encourage their
pupils and to make the best of their nascent talents. Each
type of child was to be led towards knowledge along

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NATURAL ABILITY | 81

a different route. Gentle admonition might suffice for
some but beatings might be the only way to turn a child
towards the discipline and steadiness required to learn.
Others might not respond to criticism at all and need
positive reinforcement. The anonymous author of the
Commendation gave the strongest guidance to masters on
this matter:

Therefore let the teacher of boys so direct
them that he corrects the timid by words,
masters the frivolous with rods, and bestows
upon each according to his exigencies the
gift of letters.!”

Quintilian also accepted that differing teaching methods
were necessary:

The teacher must next consider how the
pupil’s mind should be handled. Some
are idle unless you press them; other are
impatient of discipline. Fear restrains some
and paralyses others. Some need continuous
effort to knock them into shape; with others,
the sudden attack is more effective.'"°

This is reflected again in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon.
Bernard of Chartres was wont to adjust his teaching style
and the level of difficulty of the subject depending on his
audience:

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He would do so [that is, teach], however,
without trying to teach everything at one
time. On the contrary, he would dispense
his instruction to his hearers gradually, in a
manner commensurate with their powers of
assimilation.!"!

John of Salisbury also found that exhortations towards
perfection only worked on some, while flogging was
indispensable in the case of others.!” The discussion of
how to interact and direct individual pupils demonstrates
that medieval thinkers accepted that children were
different and that teachers had to treat them differently
in order to instruct them effectively. This may seem
obvious, especially for anyone who has ever taught, but
it underlines the interest theoretical authors had in real
classroom practice. Children were not empty vessels
presented to a master. At no point do any of the writers
who discussed natural ability and teaching method
suggest that individually-tailored instruction was only
for the elite or for the smaller classroom. While of course
this kind of approach would have been increasingly
constrained with each additional pupil, the need to
consider natural aptitude was seen as a necessary part of
successful teaching.

Another facet of the pedagogical literature on the
subject of natural ability was the acceptance that not
all students would thrive and flourish in the Latin
curricula of the late Middle Ages. Certain authors did
not see failure in a course of studies in Latin grammar as
complete academic failure. There was always something

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NATURAL ABILITY | 83

else that an unsuccessful pupil could do. Perhaps this
somewhat-lessened condemnatory tone was influenced
by Augustine, who, in his Confessions, admitted to his own
struggles with Greek language studies:

The hard labour of completely mastering a
foreign language mingled all the charming
quality of the Greek tales with poison. For
I knew none of the Greek words and I was
unrelentingly driven to learn by savage
threats and punishments.!4

Even if the child was willing and even if the master
was a good and attentive one (though this was not the
case in Augustine’s experience, according to his own
recollections), the outcome was not necessarily secure. In
the Recovery of the Holy Land, Dubois accepted that not
all his would-be crusaders would be expert theologians or
preachers or even literate in Latin. Dubois constructed
a sliding scale of ‘failure’ depending on when children
or youths were found to have gone as far as their natural
capabilities could take them. At the top of this scale
were those who had completed both the courses in
grammar and logic and had progressed to the study of
natural sciences and biblical exegesis. They had fallen
at the next hurdle, however: the study of preaching,
law, or medicine, and were to be directed to human or
veterinary surgery.’ Next were those who had been
unable to grasp foreign languages such as Greek, Arabic,
and Chaldean.'* These pupils were taught how to read
and write in their native French language. Dubois does

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not make it clear if they had failed in the study of these
‘oriental’ languages alone or whether Latin is included.
It is likely that he would not have considered Latin as a
foreign language and so these were the children who
mastered only Latin and French. This was hardly a mean
accomplishment but it was certainly seen as a handicap
for those intended to spend most of their lives in the
Middle East. Finally were the children who, despite the
judgement of the ‘wise philosopher’, were unable even
to master elementary Latin grammar.' These were to
be trained in blacksmithing and carpentry but also in
the construction of instruments of war (such as Roger
Bacon’s burning mirrors). In Dubois’s scheme, something
was always found to suit the talents of individual pupils
as his crusade was to be a comprehensive one made up of
all the most useful parts of French society. How could a
colony succeed without those who could build and fix and
work with their hands? Hugh of Saint-Victor was probably
the most eloquent defender of those who were less able
academically. Unlike Dubois, he did not quickly redirect
them to other studies and pursuits but instead chose to
hold them up as a model of consistency and hard work:

There are many persons whose nature has
left them so poor in ability that they can
hardly grasp with their intellect even easy
things [...] There are those who, while they
are not unaware of their own dullness,
nonetheless struggle after knowledge with
all the effort they can put forth and who, by
tirelessly keeping up their pursuit, deserve

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NATURAL ABILITY | 85

to obtain as a result of their willpower what
they by no means possess as a result of their
work.”

Indeed, Hugh of Saint-Victor’s deliberations on the
concept of natural ability are the most subtle of all the
authors examined in this section. While the anonymous
author of the Commendation touched on the idea that
almost all pupils, with effective teaching, should at
least finish his course in grammar, Hugh of Saint-Victor
demonstrated that talent was not enough.''* For him,
truly weak students were those who knew ‘that they are
in no way able to compass the highest things, [and so]
neglect even the least.” Even those who are blessed with
intelligence have their flaws:

There is another sort of man whom nature
has enriched with the full measure of ability
and to whom she shows an easy way to
come at truth. Among these, even granting
inequality in the strength of their ability,
there is nevertheless not the same virtue or
will in all for the cultivation of their natural
sense through practice and learning.’””

Hugh of Saint-Victor prized natural ability but did
not see it as the real virtue that a good student must
possess. Academic success could only ever be won by
the combination of mental astuteness and hard work.
Nothing could be achieved without effort, no matter how
intelligent the individual was.

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Medieval pedagogical treatises acknowledged the
variety of ways in which the process of teaching and the
acquisition of knowledge had to take place. In the medieval
mind, there was a clear and subtle understanding that one
single method of teaching did not work. The presentation
of information and the manner in which pupils were
persuaded to absorb it had to be different for each child if
the process of education was to succeed. While the idea of
teaching method depicted in these treatises is, of course,
a hypothetical one, it certainly suggests that the medieval
classroom was a dynamic place. These treatises expressed
the desire for teachers who thought about how they
approached each one of their pupils, and that the needs
of the individual child had a place in medieval education.

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VI
Morals and Religion

TEACHING RELIGION AND MORALS PLAYED A MAJOR
role in education in the Middle Ages. Education was
always viewed — by theorists, at any rate — as more
than a vocational activity. In the modern world, we are
encouraged to see formal education as a means to gain
academic skills that can be put to work in the wider
community, usually for economic benefit. For ancient
and medieval thinkers, it was far more than this, more
than learning to read and write, more than reading classic
works of literature, and more than preparing for a specific
set of careers. Instead, the actual process was valued in
and of itself. Presenting children with appropriate texts
and having them experience the rigours of classroom
discipline was seen by commentators as a way to develop
cultural norms in children. There were two sides to this
attitude:

“* Firstly, there was the idea that the purpose of
education was to lead to a good person and

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a valuable citizen. Though first discussed by
Quintilian in the first century CE, it persisted in
Christian educational thought, as preparation to
live a good life in order to become a valuable citizen
in the kingdom of God.

* Secondly, in the context of medieval Christendom,
moral and religious instruction allowed the pupil

to participate in the wider community as a fellow
Christian.

Learning to read was only a means to an end. There were
two methods recommended in order for a child or youth
ultimately to achieve both terrestrial worth and celestial
salvation:

«* Firstly, the child was to be taught the fundamental
beliefs and basic prayers of the Christian faith.
They were to actively contemplate God, Mary, the
lives of the saints and the state of their souls within
the classroom.

“* Secondly, the texts and literature that they were
to be exposed to had to be of an appropriately
elevated and moral tone.

However, what was deemed appropriate and moral was
a relative thing and a lot of pagan literature was admitted
freely. Indeed, morally ‘challenging’ texts were considered
useful in the medieval classroom since they could be used
to demonstrate moral lessons. Terence was a common
school text, despite some of the more salacious aspects of
his plays. His work was seen as exhibiting characteristics

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Morats & RELIGION | 89

(beyond his excellent Latin) that would have been
valuable to a boy on the cusp of adulthood. For example,
the play The Self-Tormentor may have had a prostitute as
a central character, but it also addressed themes such as
filial obedience, virtuous love, and the renunciation of
sensual pleasures. Both Martin Luther and, much later,
John Adams, the second president of the United States,
extolled the virtues of Terence, with Adams writing to
his son (John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the
United States) that: “Terence is remarkable, for good
morals, good taste, and good Latin.’! Nevertheless, there
was some resistance to the use of antique authors in the
education of Christian children. Little Paula and Pacatula
were to have no exposure to ‘secular’ authors whatsoever,
and Alexander Neckham explained that many ‘grown
men’ felt that Ovid’s Amores and Ars amatoria should be
‘taken out of adolescent hands’.'” Moral and religious
reading material and lessons were integrated into
medieval curricula so that, while the pupil was perfecting
their grammar and expanding their vocabulary, they
would also consciously and subconsciously learn what
was moral and immoral, what was holy and impious.'”

In some ways it can be argued that a third method
for training a holy and useful child was recognised by
medieval writers. This was the idea that the process
of instruction itself (submission to a master, the self-
discipline of learning) was beneficial to the moral state
of the pupil’s soul. Hugh of Saint-Victor was the principal
exponent of this concept. Discipline was one of the three
things necessary for those who study, according to Hugh:

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By discipline is meant that, by leading a
praiseworthy life, [students] must combine
moral behaviour with their knowledge.

This moral and intellectual discipline, acquired in the
classroom, was also advocated by Vincent of Beauvais
in the introductory chapter of his On the Education of
Noble Children, where he meditated on Ecclesiasticus
7:25: “Have you sons? Instruct them and bend their neck
from childhood’. While Vincent’s views on corporal
punishment have already been discussed, it is clear that
he saw the process of learning and discipline as essential
to forming a moral person.

Since moral and religious development was seen by
antique and medieval authors as central to any education,
the evolution of this idea should be considered. From
Quintilian to Vincent of Beauvais, the discussions of
citizenship and Christian humility hold in common the
idea that education prepared the moral fibre and the soul
of the pupil as much as their academic strength of the
mind. Quintilian, however, was intent on displaying the
value of the instruction that he offered in terms of social
responsibility:

I would not have my orator a philosopher,
since no other group of men has withdrawn
farther from the duties of citizenship and
from all the tasks of oratory. Which of the

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Morats & RELIGION | 91

philosophers, indeed, has ever attended
assiduously in the law-courts or won fame in
public assemblies? Which of them has had
practical experience of the administration
of public affairs about which most of them
are fond of lecturing us? The Roman I am
training ought to be wise indeed but one
who will prove his worth as a true citizen
not in private discussion and debate but by
practical experience and exertion.

An active life as a citizen was much better for Rome than
the passive contemplations of philosophers, who were
viewed — by Quintilian at least — as having little worth
to society. This perspective was difficult to apply in early
Christian commentaries on education. While Quintilian’s
pupils were preparing themselves for almost gladiatorial
roles in the realm of politics and law, those advised by
Jerome were preparing to become citizens of the kingdom
of God:

If you will send us Paula, [...] I shall take
more pride in my task than did the worldly
philosopher; for I shall not be teaching a
Macedonian king, destined to die by poison
in Babylon, but a handmaid and bride of
Christ who one day shall be presented to the
heavenly throne.”

But both were being made ready for some sort of service,
whether to God or to the res publica, and this was the

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primary objective of education for both Quintilian and
Jerome. Augustine, however, was keenly aware that
these goals could collide. While Jerome’s Paula had been
set aside from birth as a handmaid and bride of Christ,
Augustine had been trained to live the active life of
Quintilian’s good citizen, at much expense to his father
and after much effort on his own part.” In the fourth
century, though, the desire to be a good Christian and
the wish to be successful in the world were not seen as
being compatible, at least by Augustine. He describes his
studies as ‘empty’ and the time he spent as a teacher of
rhetoric as a period when ‘we went on being led astray
and leading others astray’, doing ‘this publicly, through
teaching the subjects which are referred to as “the liberal
arts” and privately, under the false name of religion’.!”*
Though it was already agreed that study was a way to
learn about salvation and to contemplate God (through
the Scriptures, especially), Augustine seems to indicate
that it was not possible to learn Christian morals via
the standard curriculum of late Rome. He contradicts
himself, though, when he accepts the importance certain
pagan authors had in developing his own approach to
God. For example, he writes that reading Cicero’s lost
work Hortensius ‘changed the whole feeling of my mind,
giving a new direction to the prayers I offered to You, O
God’.’” He also admits that there are elements of truth in
pagan authors:

Any statements by those who are called
philosophers, especially the Platonists, which
happen to be true and consistent with our

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Morats & RELIGION | 93

faith should not cause alarm, but be claimed
for our own use.!*°

In other words, there is Truth and there are truths, and
while minor truths couldn’t replace the central Truth,
they could still help the student become a better Christian.
Augustine’s struggle between his training as a rhetor and
his upbringing as a Christian is a good example of the
blending of classical and Christian concepts — as well as
classical and Christian works of literature — in medieval
elementary and grammar curricula.'*!

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the primary
texts for learning to read were almost all of an explicitly
religious nature, but there were exceptions such as
Cato’s Distiches, Aesop’s fables, and the Ilias Latina, a
contracted Latin version of Homer’s Iliad. Elementary
readers were made up of prayers, Psalms, and other
devotional items, such as the seven deadly sins and the
seven virtues. This tradition was established early on by
Augustine and Jerome, who were engaged in forming a
Christian curriculum, or rather, a curriculum that could
be studied by Christians, educating them and grounding
them in their faith at the same time. However, works
such as Aesop’s fables (a favourite reader of Quintilian’s)
and, especially, the Distiches of Cato continued to be
used in both elementary and grammar instruction
in the Middle Ages. Ancient writers were frequently
included in medieval curricula because they were seen

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as the best examples of Latin composition. Furthermore,
Roman morals were often seen as being compatible with
medieval, Christian mores.

In Jerome’s letter to Laeta, the Psalms are presented as
an ideal teaching tool for a young child, probably because
they retained something of their original Hebrew metrical
qualities and were therefore easier to memorise.'” The
Psalms were the key introductory reading text from at
least the sixth century, where they initially appeared
alongside, and then replaced, the Distiches of Cato. By
repeatedly copying the Psalms on wax tablets, pupils
learned to read, to form the letters of the alphabet into
words and sentences, and to memorise the sacred text
simultaneously. There is no mention of the prayers that
would be recommended by some later commentators.
Those who do not mention prayers as the elementary text
in their programmes do not mention alternatives. It is
likely that the use of prayers in this manner was common
practice. Philippe of Navarre states clearly that the first
lessons taught to children by their parents should be the
common prayers of the Middle Ages:

The first thing that one ought to teach a
child, after he begins to believe and listen,
so that it is belief in God: the Credo in Deum,
Pater noster, Ave Maria.'*

This is repeated by Pierre Dubois, who doesn’t shun the
use of prayers and Psalms as the initial introduction to
reading, placing the Psalms before Cato and the other
minor authors but concurrent with ‘Donatus’ as befitted

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Morats & RELIGION | 95

his accelerated curriculum.'* Gerson, in his A.B.C. for
Simple People, translates into French the prayers that
were generally used for teaching reading and presents
them to his audience of ‘boys and girls, big and little’ as a
catechism and simple reader combined.'* Aeneas Silvius
Piccolomini, writing later in the fifteenth century for the
would-be king of Hungary, also expects that his young
patron would have begun his own education with prayers
and the articles of faith.'°°

The standardisation of advice regarding introductory
readings emphasised strongly one aspect of the mentality
behind medieval education. These writers lived in
Christendom and wanted children to be trained as active
members of the Christian community. If children were
going to be taught how to read, why not recommend
the prayers and beliefs that would bind them into that
society and permit them to participate in one of its major
communal activities, Christian worship? In this way, even
the most rudimentary instruction would allow for this.
Furthermore, these Latin texts served as a springboard
into grammar education proper for those fortunate
enough to continue.

The contents of a medieval child’s reader became a part
of their daily instructional experience. Prayers and other
devotional pursuits were supposed to make up a part of
the school day, every day. John of Salisbury described how
Bernard of Chartres used moral material in his teaching
and set aside the end of the evening revision for prayer:

Since, however, it is not right to allow
any school or day to be without religion,

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subject matter was presented to foster
faith, build up morals, and to inspire those
present at this quasi collation to perform
good works. This [evening] ‘declination’,
or philosophical collation, closed with the
pious commendation of the souls of the
departed to their Redeemer by the devout
recitation of the Sixth Penitential Psalm and

137

the Lord’s Prayer.

This idea that ‘no school or day [should] be without
religion’ is repeated in Jean Gerson’s precepts for the
choirboys of Notre Dame in Paris. These boys were
required to recite the hours of Our Lady on a daily
basis, either in pairs or with the master in charge, as
well as frequent trips to confession.'** These two groups
of pupils, however, were clerics of a sort and dedicated
already to a life of prayer. But children preparing for
secular life also prayed as part of their school day and
it is likely that prayers were said on a frequent basis
within the schoolroom in order to preserve them in the
pupil’s memory. Piccolomini expects Prince Ladislas to
have learned ‘everything that befits a Christian’, that is,
the Pater noster, the Ave Maria, the Gospel of John, the
Creed, several collects, the mortal sins, the ‘Gifts of the
Holy Spirit’, the Ten Commandments, the ‘Works of
Mercy’, and so on. He does not explicitly state that the
prince would have recited these daily but they had to
be known so that they could be repeated at any point.'”
Much of what Piccolomini assumes that Ladislas has
been taught by way of prayers is the same as what Gerson

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Morats & RELIGION | 97

translates into French in his A.B.C. for Simple People,
namely the Pater noster, the Ave Maria, the Credo, the
Ten Commandments, and selections of church teachings,
such as the seven mortal sins and the seven sacraments.”
The advice given by Gerson and Piccolomini was not for
future clerics. They expressed the assumption that all
children who had received elementary instruction would
know their prayers and the principal articles of their
faith. Such recommendations also underline that such an
outcome was one of the main goals of such instruction.

As pupils moved from elementary prayers to the
grammar curriculum proper, there was a concern that
the literature that they were being exposed to was
appropriate and articulated, ifnot Christian ideals, at least
compatible moral examples. The compromise regarding
the earlier part of the grammar curriculum gradually
came into being as the auctores octo, or the eight authors.
The grammar curriculum in later medieval Europe was
relatively standardised across political, cultural, and
linguistic borders. While there was no firm definition of
which works made up the auctores octo, the following
works appear to have been the most popular and most
widespread:

“* The Distiches, a selection of proverbs ascribed to
Cato but most likely from third- or fourth-century
Spain

“* Eclogue of Theodulus, an anonymous tenth-century
poem describing a versification competition
between the personifications of Truth and the Liar

“* Tobias, averse book on morality from around 1185,

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98 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

attributed to Matthew of Vendéme, but certainly
from France

* Doctrinale altum parabolarum, a collection of
proverbs also from France, attributed to Alain de
Lille (d. 1204)

° De contemptu mundi (also known as the Chartula),
a twelfth-century verse treatise on morality once
thought to be a work of Bernard of Clairvaux

* Facetus, a verse book on manners and etiquette
from early thirteenth-century England, attributed
to John of Garland

«* Liber Aesopi, available in many Latin editions but
the most popular in the later Middle Ages appears
to have been its rendering by Gualterus Anglicus
(chaplain to Henry II) in the second half of the
twelfth century

Floretus, an anonymous undated religious poem

These auctores octo would have poised no problems to the
attentive commentator. Most were solidly Christian in
their cultural background and the exceptions, such as the
Distiches of Cato and Aesop’s fables, were perfectly moral
and upright in tone in addition to being models of good
Latin composition.

So while Jerome sought to cut Paula off from any kind
of literature that was not explicitly Christian, the existence
of the auctores octo demonstrates that later teachers and
theorists did not have the same qualms. Later authors did
not feel it necessary to prevent pupils from being exposed
to morally compatible and high quality pagan literature.
Vincent of Beauvais has no issue with pagan literature,

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Morats & RELIGION | 99

as long as it is used selectively and with caution. Quoting
Jerome (who contradicts his precepts for Paula), he
writes:

We are accustomed, when we read the
philosophers, when books of worldly
knowledge come into our hands, if we
discover anything useful in them, we adapt
it to our doctrine. However, if [we discover]
anything remaining concerning idols, love,
things concerning worldly cares, these we

erase.'*!

Vincent goes on to add that even the Bible advocates
reading widely: ‘Examine everything, hold fast to that
which is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Likewise, the
author of the Commendation of the Clerk felt that texts of
both a ‘moral character’ and ‘poetic deduction’ should be
combined to offer grammar pupils edifying examples and
decently-composed Latin.'” This interplay between good
morals and literary quality is also discussed by Gerson
and Piccolomini and leads to the idea that, if children
were to be prepared properly for this world and the next,
they had to be exposed to some writings giving advice on
temporal subjects.

In 1417, Gerson wrote a letter to the Dauphin’s
tutor, which contained a reading list for the prince.'*
Of the thirty-six books that Gerson recommended,
twenty are explicitly religious and sixteen are historical,
philosophical, and political works, written by both pagans
and Christians. The last selection includes books that

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100 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

promote good government, such as Pseudo-Aristotle’s
Economics, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics,
and those that would develop the prince’s military
knowledge, like Frontinus’s De stratagematibus bellicis
(On the Strategies of War) and Vegetius’s De re militari
(On Military Matters). These were written by pagan
authors but they do not gainsay the tenets of Christianity.
Their presence in such a list composed for a future ruler
is both obvious and sensible. However, the volume of
meditative Christian literature recommended by Gerson
is impressive. Gerson expects the young prince to spend
as much time reading for the next world, no doubt in
order to improve his behaviour in this one. This morality
and religiosity were essential to becoming and being a
good king:

If the instruction of any boy in religion and
virtues is praiseworthy and right, although
folly has been bound up in his heart and his
feeling and thinking are prone to evil, who
does not see how much more praiseworthy
beyond the measure of merit it would be to
urge this in the case of a son of a king who
is expected to be about to rule and about to
guide the government or helm of the ship of
state of the classes of the whole republic?!“

While Gerson included the Bible in the course of religious
and virtuous instruction, he also suggests a selection of his
own works including treatises on such matters as the art
of dying well, the Ten Commandments, the examination

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Morats & RELIGION | 101

of conscience and several works concerned with just
governance. Of additional interest is the fact that Gerson
recommends that many of these works be read in French,
rather than Latin. This includes all the works of the octo
auctores, which were supposed to serve as introductions
to Latin reading in the medieval curriculum. This leads
us to the realisation that the worth of the octo auctores
extended beyond their linguistic value and to their worth
as vectors of moral and cultural knowledge.'*

In comparison, Piccolomini’s suggested reading in his
treatise for Prince Ladislas, written in the early 1450s,
reflects the trends of the Italian city states. Gerson’s staid
diet of devotional essays with minimal exposure to pre-
Christian poetry appears odd when examined side-by-side
with Piccolomini’s On the Education of Boys. While Prince
Ladislas must believe and must be properly instructed in
his faith, the literature that he should concentrate on is far
more ‘secular’:

Not only the Bible but also pagan literature
shows [salvation].!“°

The works of Homer and Virgil (which Piccolomini, in
his optimism, recommends as first readers for the young
Ladislas) are seen as beneficial not simply because of the
‘sublimity of heroic verse’ but because the child would be
‘endowed with the noblest sentiments’. This is a direct
quote from Quintilian.“” He was struggling, however,
against less ‘fashionable’ feelings about what an education
should consist of, especially with regards to poetry. He

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102 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

suggests that some people would object its inclusion in a
curriculum:

Soon, however, the throng of those who
wish to seem, rather than be theologians
will revile me because I am about to speak
of the poets and urge the reading of them.
‘Why do you bring poets to us from Italy,
they will say, ‘and why do you hasten to
corrupt the holy morals of Germany with the
effeminate licentiousness of the poets? Was
not Marcus Nobilior branded as shameful by
your Romans for bringing the poet Ennius
into Aetolia when he was consul? Did not
your Cicero, whom you follow, whom you
admire, say in his Tusculan Disputations that
the poets were rightly banished by Plato
from his imaginary state, since he required
the best morals and the best condition for
his republic? What about Boethius? Did he
not call the Muses of the poets “prostitute
actresses”? What about blessed Jerome?
Does he not relate that he was beaten by
an angel because he was eagerly pursuing
profane learning? Depart from us and take
your poets with you.’

Yet Piccolomini refuses to accept these arguments (or
return to Italy as he feels his detractors would demand)
and presents Jerome as the perfect example of the melding
of Christian belief and profane education:

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MoraLs & RELIGION | 103

Jerome overflows everywhere with poetic
language, nor is there a single line of his that
does not smack of Ciceronian eloquence,
even though he denied himself Cicero and
the odd pagan book. I would say the same
of the other doctors of the Church, whose
smooth tongues, which would otherwise
have been mute, were polished by the
poets.”

Piccolomini might as well have quoted directly from
Augustine’s praise of the eloquence of Cicero in helping
him to form his prayers to God.'® Poetry was an issue
for some commentators on medieval elementary and
grammar education. For example, Gerson excludes
all poetry except the moralising verse dialogue of the
Eclogue of Theodulus.’*' Gerson’s recommendations
are very extreme, given that Ovid, Terence, Virgil, and
Horace (amongst others) were all frequently used by
contemporary grammar teachers. And Piccolomini
accepts that some poetry is unsuitable for boys to read:

We do not, indeed, lay it down as a principle
that all poets should be read and that boys
should study them obsessively. There are
many erotic and vicious things in them.’

This approach allowed for the maximum exposure of
grammar pupils to the finer literature of ancient Rome
while protecting them from inappropriate influences. In
reality, however, grammar boys were often introduced to

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104 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

more worldly works, like Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (The Art of
Love).' Occasionally, this lead to a backlash against the
use of all types of pagan literature. Giovanni Dominici, for
example, railed against the use of pagan literature in the
instruction of a Christian in his educational treatise from
around 1400:

But children of this present age are brought
up so that renegade nature is enfeebled in the
lap of infidelity, in the midst of reprehensible
acts, already soliciting impotent nature
to sin; and are taught every infamous evil
that can be imagined in the study of all of
Ovid, his letters, his De Arte Amandi, his
most meretricious and carnal writings. Thus
they pass through Virgil, the tragedies and
other works, teaching them more to love
according to the flesh than showing them
good morals.'*

But such debates serve to underline the centrality of the
moral and religious character of medieval education. A
boy might learn how to compose beautiful Latin but if
his soul was condemned to eternal damnation, then the
medieval educational process — as envisioned by the
majority of pedagogical writers — had failed.

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VII

Being a Teacher

A teacher is understood to be learned,
stern, mature in age, and neither
negligent or arrogant.!5°

ACCORDING TO MEDIEVAL EDUCATIONAL THEORISTS,
the role of the teacher was diverse, extending beyond their
basic purpose of imparting knowledge to their pupils.
Their academic responsibility had to be joined with a role
as a moral authority and as an example. This was often
combined with the idea of the teacher as a pastoral figure,
caring for their charges’ health and well-being. These
functions could change depending on the actual position
that a teacher might hold within a school. Most of the
literature that dwells on the suitability and character
of teachers is exceptionally aspirational, oftentimes
declaring that, in order to be a master, one had to be a
perfect man. Vincent of Beauvais demands the following:

Five things are required in a teacher,
namely, a clever mind, an honest life, humble

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106 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

knowledge, unaffected eloquence, and a
practical knowledge of teaching.'*

This list can be reduced to two key topics, the academic
character of masters and their moral character. Authors
demanded high standards in both since these represented
the dual role of the master: that of a teacher and that of
a moral example and carer. While the importance placed
on moral instruction in medieval educational treatises has
already been discussed, it needs to be briefly reexamined
in the context of the office of the master.

The principal duty, indeed, the reason for being, of
a teacher was as a conduit for academic knowledge. In
terms of medieval elementary and grammar curricula,
this would have comprised of instructing children in the
alphabet, prayers, reading, writing, grammar, rhetoric,
and sometimes more. While of course such instruction
was the job of the master or multiple masters, it was rarely
described by commentators. Indeed, once a discussion of
a favoured curriculum had taken place, authors did not
feel the need to enumerate the exact academic tasks that a
teacher was to complete.'*’ There are few hints about what
level of education a prospective master was supposed to
achieve. It is naturally suggested that ideal teachers should
themselves have been educated from a young age. For
example, Dubois does not discuss what kind of teachers
his young crusaders should have but he does recommend
that certain ofthe graduates should themselves be retained
as teachers. In his idealised scheme, some students were
never destined to be sent to the Holy Land and were to
be trained from childhood to be teachers, especially those

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BEING A TEACHER | 107

who excelled in languages (in this case, Greek, Arabic, and
Chaldean).!** Girls who were delicate but who performed
well in subjects like medicine, surgery, and pharmacy
were also to be retained as teachers.'” This emphasis
on having thoroughly educated masters and mistresses
who had long experience as pupils before moving on to
teaching was not always played out in reality, however.
With regards to titles and ‘professional’ qualifications,
there is an acceptance that a person did not necessarily
need to have a degree in order to be a competent teacher.
The anonymous author of the Commendation spends a
certain amount of time considering this subject. For him,
there are four types of masters:

For one man is a master in title and reality,
another in reality but not in title, a third in
title but not in reality, a fourth neither in
title nor reality but in name only.’

The first is, of course, favoured, but the second, the master
without title but with the learning and experience, is still
an honourable man:

The master in reality but not in title is
he who has the treasure of science and
the heritage of virtue but does not have a
privileged title. And he is like a noble, strong
and praiseworthy in arms, who has not yet
been knighted.'”

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108 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

The last two are described in unfavourable terms as
counterfeiters who seek the style and privileges of the
office without undergoing the tests and depredations of
training. While these descriptions are applied to masters
of Arts, the author considers the question of title versus
ability in the case of more elementary schoolmasters:

And first concerning schools where often
not a master in arts presides but a teacher of
boys is named without title, who however
sometimes is really a master although he
lacks the title.”

Title and diplomas are not required but can serve as a
means to judge when someone has received the requisite
instruction themselves. But a teacher with neither title
nor ability is dubbed a ‘vainglorious’ leader.’** Perhaps
this is why so little attention is given to this in pedagogical
literature. The emphasis is clearly on whether a person is
capable and knowledgeable rather than a graduate of a
great university. Neither Gerson nor Philippe of Navarre
nor Piccolomini nor any of the others state explicitly what
kind of formal training a would-be teacher should have.
Gerson’s only stipulation regarding the masters of the
choirboys of Paris is that the song master ‘should be of
such morals as to be destined to be the master we name.’
This brings us to the qualification that pedagogical
commentators really focused their attentions on: the
moral standing of the master.'®

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BEING A TEACHER | 109

In his treatise On Christian Doctrine, Augustine
defines the impetus behind the focus on the morality of
a teacher:

No matter how impressive the style of a
speaker, his life has the greater influence in
ensuring that his audience is receptive to his
words. For the man who speaks wisely and
eloquently but who leads a wicked life, may
indeed teach many who are eager to learn,
although, as it is written, ‘he is unprofitable
to his own soul.’ (Ecclesiasticus 37:12)!

The centrality of this idea, that a moral man would have a
more important impact on his students than an immoral
man, is reflected in later literature; indeed this idea is a
key tenet of medieval pedagogical commentary. Let us
consider this in the case of Gerson’s recommendations
regarding the choirboys at Paris. These boys were
precious, especially considering their role in the divine
offices of the Church. As servants of God, they had to be
protected. The master, therefore, had to be uncorrupted
and untainted ‘because what will the student do if not that
which he sees the master doing’. They were not to be
exposed to any kind of inappropriate behaviour. Indeed,
they were neither to see evil nor hear it:

No one should sin before his eyes, neither
by repulsive and obscene word, nor by a
deceitful and dissolute gesture or touch, nor
by a wanton and evil deed.’

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While the master of the boys was a focus for such
exhortations, the master of grammar was also required
to be of impeccable character. He too was to be ‘of such
morals, which we have said the [master of the boys] ought
to have’! Clearly, the moral nature of the job was just
as important if not more important than the academic
one. The statement that the grammar teacher should be
of high moral fibre is made before any discussion of his
role in the classroom. Indeed, Gerson does not make any
demands regarding the teacher’s intellectual formation or
expertise. In addition, either the master of the boys or the
master of grammar had to be with the boys all the time:

And both should arrange the hours of the
day and the night in such a manner that
always one of them can attend to the boys,
in the house as well as outside in whatever
place the boys happen to go.'”

The reason for this was three-fold. Firstly, they were there
to protect the boys. Gerson is very keen to ensure that the
boys were isolated to a certain extent from those outside
the cathedral school. This is almost certainly because of
the fear of unsavoury characters taking advantage of the
boys:

In addition servants should be forbidden
from having close friendship with them,
indeed those not of the household nor
clerics nor servants nor chaplains should
not be tolerated to consort with them

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BEING A TEACHER | 111

particularly unless in the presence of one of
the masters.'7!

Gerson describes this in terms of one bad sheep leading
the flock astray. Secondly, they were to supervise the
behaviour of the boys. Gerson is exhaustive in describing
the sins that should be watched for and corrected in the
boys, from speaking French to chattering in church.'”
Thirdly, they were there to act as examples. The masters
were meant to be living illustrations of the highest
standards of behaviour and had to be constantly exhibited
to their pupils. Just as bad habits could be formed by
observation, so too could good habits. While the teachers
watched the boys, the boys watched them, combining
learning with childish imitation. In the medieval teacher,
as in the medieval curriculum, morality and academic
attainment went hand-in-hand.

While commentators focused on the propriety of
teachers and only made passing remarks on the academic
qualifications necessary, there is some discussion on the
roles and specialties of a master in terms of a school’s
hierarchy. As we have seen above, Gerson’s choir school
was to have a master (magister, magister puerorum) and a
master of grammar (magister grammaticae). The first was
in charge of the school, the boys, and the other teachers.
In many ways, he resembled a type of headmaster, more
concerned with administration and discipline rather
than actual instruction. The grammar teacher taught the
boys Latin language and grammar, in addition to acting
as an assistant to the master of the boys. Added to these
personnel was the figure of the song master (magister

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112 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

cantus) who taught the boys singing, music, and the
liturgical repertory necessary to their position:

Let the master of song teach the boys
at set hours, principally full chant and
counterpoint, and other worthy descants,
not dissolute and shameless refrains, nor
should he press them so much in such things

that they ruin progress in grammar.'”

Gerson does not assign the song master any particular
supervisory role over the boys. In this organisational
format, there were three masters in the school, only two
of whom had the responsibility of guardianship. While
Gerson does not make any comment on the matter, one
wonders if either the master or the grammar master had
to be present with the boys during their singing lessons.
This hierarchy can be directly compared to that
recommended by the author of the Commendation. In
the ‘illegitimate school house of the artists’ (that is, the
average grammar school whose principal is either not a
master at all or who has a degree from a university ‘of slight
reputation lacking privileges from princes of the world’),
there were four officers.’ The first is the master who was
the paterfamilias of the school. Secondly there was the
disciple who appears to be a type of trainee-master. The
master’s relationship to the disciple was compared to the
relationship between a father and his heir, to whom he
‘dispenses the treasures of his mind or at least tries to’.!”
Thirdly there was the pedagogue who helps the boys in
the classroom like a kind of assistant. Finally there is the

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BEING A TEACHER | 113

monitor, who observed the boys and noted down their
mistakes and transgressions. It is clear that this was a
relatively low-level school catering to younger boys who
required more help in the course of their lessons and more
constraints on their behaviour — as the author himself
states explicitly:

Assistants are more opportune in unlicensed
schools of artists than in others, because
their hordes are younger and more
heterogeneous and so require more tutors

in acquiring both morals and knowledge.'”

This is in comparison to the ‘authentic’ schools where,
apart from janitors and bedels, there are only three officers;
the master, the disciple, and the bachelor (who acts as a
substitute for the master).!”” Even though, in reality, most
schools were made up of a single teacher giving lessons
to a broad range of children learning at different levels,
those with more complicated organisations did resemble
the patterns laid down by Gerson and the anonymous
author of the Commendation and were directly paralleled
in towns and cities across medieval Europe. The many
roles that the master was supposed to play in the
medieval schoolroom indicated the position’s theoretical
sophistication in the eyes of commentators. While the
academic requirements for the job may have been passed
over or taken for granted, the interest in the character
of the master emphasises their function as guardian and
model, and underlines the task of education to form the
personality of the pupil as well as the mind.

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Vill

Education of Women

WOMEN AND GIRLS ARE GENERALLY NOT SEEN AS BEING
the traditional recipients of education — even of
elementary and grammar education — in the Middle
Ages. There is a tendency to ascribe misogynistic
attitudes to theoretical literature on education without
fully comprehending the nature of some treatises. For
example, in Gerson’s For the Boys of the Church of Paris,
there is no mention or discussion of the instruction
of girls. This, of course, is completely appropriate as
the treatise is directed at a specific group, in this case,
choirboys. There is no discussion of the education of
girls in Quintilian’s Education of an Orator because this
is aimed at the professional training of orators and other
public men. Hugh of Saint-Victor does not examine female
education either in the Didascalicon since this work was
a weighty and oftentimes abstract consideration of the
nature of knowledge, without any explicitly gender-based
motivation. However, none of these works necessarily
represented any real opposition to girls participating

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116 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

in formal intellectual development in the classroom. In
other writings, Gerson, for example, spoke directly to
girls as his audience:

Listen all, little and big, boys and girls, and
other simple people.!”

Though women could not become orators in first-
century Rome, Quintilian still discussed the importance
of having an engaged and educated mother for the future
success of her sons:

As to parents, I should wish them to be
as highly educated as possible. (I do not
mean only the fathers. We are told that
the eloquence of the Gracchi owed much
to their mother Cornelia, whose highly
cultivated style is known also to posterity
from her letters).!”

The education of women was frequently discussed in a
great deal of detail by medieval authors, but we must be
careful not to see the absence of such discussion as direct
opposition to the intellectual development of women.
Instead, the focus of this chapter will be those treatises
that explicitly examine the how and why of female
education, and both the positive and negative ways in
which it was viewed by commentators.

It can be argued that the pedagogical literature
concerning girls had a greater emphasis on morals than
that for boys. According to Rosemary Barton Tobin in

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 117

her book on women in Vincent of Beauvais, the education
of women is not physical, only partially intellectual, but
almost completely moral in its aims in the Middle Ages.'*°
As we saw above, the education of all children in the
Middle Ages was intensely moral and religious. Indeed,
since that was seen by many theorists as being the central
rationale for any instruction, it is difficult to construct
a discourse based on gendered differentiation. It is also
problematic to suggest that such a moral focus was more
pertinent for girls than, for example, for boys who were
preparing for clerical careers during which they were
supposed to have the care of souls. Of course, it was a
factor, and a strong factor, in the educational experience
of girls and cannot be ignored. However, it should always
be viewed in the wider context of medieval pedagogical
trends.

The education of girls was just another part of medieval
instruction that authors had to consider and was not arare,
unusual, or monstrous thing. Vincent of Beauvais seems
to emphasise that girls should be completely virtuous and
suggests that this trait must already be in place before any
education begins. Quoting Ovid, he wrote:

No one is able to acquire knowledge
If he offends modesty.'*!

While he cited this at the beginning of his chapters on the
education of women, he had already spent a great deal of
time discussing the need to engender sufficient goodness
and right living in the sons of nobles. What is of interest
here is that he suggested that an excellent moral state of

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being is required in girls before they begin to learn, while
morality and goodness may be developed during the
education of boys:

As long as noble girls are kept safe by the
aforementioned diligent rule of parents,
it is suitable that they should be imbued in
letters and instructed in morals.

The girl must be good and made secure before she is made
better through education. Vincent of Beauvais, however,
seems to turn this point on its head a few pages later.
He himself did not necessarily see that he had made a
distinction between moral prerequisites for boys and for
girls:

Because again it has been said above
concerning boys, the same should be
encouraged in the immature period of
life of girls, that they should be evidently
instructed in morals and good habits.'™

For Vincent, moral instruction was absolutely necessary
for both boys and girls. Perhaps his focus on this subject
in these chapters pertaining to girls and women was
simply because he had already discussed his course
of intellectual education and believed that what was
recommended for the sons of nobles was just as applicable
for their daughters. Perhaps he felt that he would have
been repeating himself ifhe had examined what should be
taught and what should be read all over again. It is difficult

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 119

to say for certain, especially with Vincent of Beauvais,
whether morality is discussed because it was simply a
part of medieval education or whether writers wanted to
underline its importance for women.

The creation of a protective cocoon around a female
pupil as part of their education, as advocated by Vincent
of Beauvais, may initially seem to be gender-specific. The
emphasis on keeping the girl safe and secure and ensuring
that her innate, pre-existing, goodness not be tarnished in
any way, has a long tradition. Jerome demands the same
for Paula:

She must have no comprehension of foul
words, no knowledge of worldly songs, and
her childish tongue must be imbued with
the sweet music of the Psalms. Let boys with
their wanton frolics be kept far from Paula:
let even her maids and attendants hold
aloof from association with the worldly, lest
they render their evil knowledge worse by
teaching it to her.'™*

But these demands should not necessarily be interpreted
as being inherently misogynistic or paternalistic. Vincent
of Beauvais is just as concerned with the morals of his
noble boys as well as his noble girls. And Jean Gerson’s
recommendations for the choirboys of Paris in order
to keep them safe and pure and innocent of the tawdry
nature of the world around them are very like Jerome’s
recommendations for Paula:

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120 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

We do not wish that anyone should be
admitted intending to stay with the boys nor
to learn with them from outside, unless by
special license of the superiors, lest our boys
get bad habits from intimacy with others,
for a single bad sheep corrupts every sheep,
especially where anyone had been bent and
introduced to immense sins which ought
not even to be named.'**

These fears appear particularly appropriate when we
remember that both Paula and the choirboys were in
training for lives of religious and clerical celibacy and
service. But such fears also permeate the advice for boys
who would become men of the world. Piccolomini had no
wish for the young king of Hungary to be surrounded by
those who would lead him astray:

For this reason let those who assist you
be instructed in good morals; let there be
no vice in them; let them employ no foul
language, for we are all prone to imitate
shameful and corrupt ways [...] “Habit is
strong in tender years’, as Virgil says.'*°

The strong emphasis on maintaining morals in pupils,
going so far as to isolate them from the unsavoury
influence of the rowdy lads down the street, is the same
for both boys and girls.

Virtue and good morals, however, had to be sustained
during the course of a girl’s education, as in a boy’s.

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 121

This was done in more ways than reading religious and
edifying literature. As Vincent of Beauvais suggests,
reading should be joined with prayer and work.'®” The
practice of prayer is present in almost all the pedagogical
treatises mentioned here, with the Pater noster, Credo, and
Ave Maria being the first things that elementary pupils
learned. But for girls, working with the hands was seen
as a particularly important part of their education. There
is no mention of boys doing any sort of craft or manual
work in the educational treatises of the Middle Ages —
with the notable example of Dubois’s crusading builders
with their weaponised mirrors. It is here, therefore, that
we see a marked departure in the recommendations for
boys and for girls. Girls had to be kept busy with work
when not actively being instructed. Then again, boys
also engaged in physical, non-academic activities as part
of their education. Boys who were preparing for active
lives in the realms of politics and war were, of course,
encouraged to train as soldiers and partake in other
knightly pursuits, such as hunting. Piccolomini references
Vegetius’s De re militari (On Military Matters) several
times in his recommendations to Ladislas of Hungary,
for example, urging him to learn military skills and ‘to
acquire strong and well-knit limbs’. '** These activities
were not open to girls. Vincent of Beauvais does not state
in his own words what ‘work’ girls were to do but instead
quotes heavily from Jerome. Jerome, who in many ways
is our most valuable source on the elementary education
of girls at the beginning of the Middle Ages, encouraged
other, specific activities:

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122 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

Let her learn also to make wool, to hold the
distaff, to put the basket in her lap, to turn
the spindle, to shape the thread with her
thumb.!*°

While Roman tradition held such activities as the proper
occupation of high-born women, both Jerome and
Vincent see it in another light. While secular boys might
be out training in arms or riding or learning to hold the
reins of state, their sisters were limited to praying and
textile work. By learning these more mundane skills, the
girls were once again being protected. As Jerome wrote
and Vincent of Beauvais quoted:

Work, so that the devil should always find
you occupied.'”

While girls were assigned the staff over the sword,
however, the fear of idleness leading to sin was equally a
concern for boys. Jerome’s exhortation to work in order
to keep the devil at bay was first directed at a brother
monk, not at a woman or a girl. It is, therefore, difficult
to say with certainty if Jerome and Vincent thought
girls particularly vulnerable to the evils of indolence or
whether they simply sought an acceptable substitution
for the activities open to boys.

What do pedagogical theorists say concerning the
actual, intellectual education of girls? The emphasis, of
course, was always on learning prayers and reading the
Bible, just as it was for their male counterparts. Jerome’s
course of studies, for example, is completely Christian

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 123

and almost completely scriptural. Little Paula was to
follow her alphabet with singing the Psalms and Proverbs
and work her way through the entire Bible until she could
‘safely’ read the Song of Songs. This reading would be
augmented by suitable Christian writers such as Cyprian,
Athanasius, and Hilary:

Then at last she may safely read the Song of
Songs: if she were to read it at the beginning
she might be harmed by not perceiving it
as the song of a spiritual bride expressed in
fleshly language.'*!

This was a purely religious education, tailored for a child
who was already dedicated as a handmaid of the Lord.
Peter Abelard’s letter to a group of Paraclete nuns heavily
references Jerome’s letter to Laeta, demonstrating the
Church Father’s continued relevance in pedagogical
matters.’"* Much of the content does not change over
time, even for secular girls in the later Middle Ages. For
example, Rosemary Barton Tobin in her work on Vincent
of Beauvais and the education of women quotes from a
thirteenth-century sermon by Humbert of Romans (d.
1277). He was clear what young girls, especially those
who are of a higher social order, were supposed to learn
and why:

Note that these girls, especially if they be
the daughters of the rich, ought to devote
themselves to study, for to this purpose
their parents have intended them. Hence

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they ought to know the Psalter or Hours
of Our Lady or the Office of the Dead or
other prayers to God, and so be more
fitted for religious life should they wish to
join it later, or more fitted for the study of
Sacred Scripture, like Paula and Eustochia
and others who remained unwedded, and
because of their devotion to books became

deeply versed in sacred letters.!”°

Humbert was unambiguous: girls should be educated
only for religious reasons. As a result, if they became
nuns they could participate in the liturgy. If they were
studious spinsters, they could emulate Jerome’s Paula.
Other authors responded differently to the question of
what to do with an educated girl. In the book written by
Geoffrey de la Tour Landry in the fourteenth century,
education was to be valued in a marriage. He gives the
example of Delbora, a figure from the Golden Legend. Her
mother sends her to school to learn clergie (signifying a
Latin education) and Holy Scripture. Her husband is both
evil and cruel but, through her good sense and thanks to
her education, Delbora is able to change him into a good
ruler:

Therefore this is a good example of how one
must put one’s daughters to learning the
wisdom of the clergy and Holy Scripture;
because if they are knowing they can better
see their salvation and better recognise evil
from good.’

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 125

This is echoed by Vincent of Beauvais when he wrote
that a wife ‘should neither be a mistress nor a servant,
but a companion’.”> Even basic instruction in Latin
literature would allow for a husband and wife to interact
on a somewhat more equal level. Such instruction would
also allow girls to read beyond their psalms and books of
hours. However, while exposure to the correct material
enabled girls to ‘avoid harmful thoughts and avoid the
pleasures of the flesh’, more worldly fare would lead
them astray.'°° De la Tour Landry warns against books
of ‘lecheries’ or ‘worldly fables’ as they simply offer no
profit to their readers.” The profit in question was a
moral and spiritual one. However, this was very much
the case for boys too. They too had to learn their prayers
and read their psalms and avoid inappropriate reading
material, especially during elementary and the early parts
of grammar education. While the message may have been
underlined for girls, it was the same message: instruction
and education were additional means by which to save
one’s soul.

Two writers in particular appear to have taken utterly
opposite positions on the question of the education of
girls. Pierre Dubois, in his Recovery of the Holy Land,
includes girls in his radical educational scheme from the
start. Both boys and girls were to attend his preparation
schools, both were to take part in Latin grammar
instruction, and there were a range of roles for them when
they had completed their studies. Firstly, they could be
trained as physicians, surgeons, or apothecaries.

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126 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

All the girls of the foundation, like the males,
should be instructed in Latin grammar
and afterwards in logic and in one foreign
language; then in the fundamentals of the
natural sciences and finally in surgery and
medicine.!*

Dubois explains the importance of this in the context of
a crusade:

Especially [would they influence] the
women whom they would aid through
the practice of medicine and surgery, and
particularly in their secret infirmities and
needs.!”

Secondly, the most handsome would be given theological
training and married to both Greek and Muslim men of
importance. They could then act as undercover Christian
missionaries.” Thirdly, girls who were particularly gifted
and who had delicate health could stay at the schools in
France as teachers of surgery, medicine, or languages.””!
This was a dizzying plan. For Dubois, everyone had to aid
in the retaking of the Holy Land and girls were not to be
excused from this duty. Possibly the most radical thing
that he suggests is that if girls are bright and responding
well to study, they could be exempt from ‘the morning
canonical hours and the celebration of Masses’ in his
reformed convent schools.*” Dubois, for one, clearly felt
that gifted girls were too often kept at their prayers when

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EDUCATION OF WoMEN | 127

they could be learning and actively contributing to the
world at large.

Dubois’s views were, of course, highly unconventional
and did not reflect the realities of the education of young
girls. The strident ideas of Philippe of Navarre regarding
their education took an entirely opposing position. More
than any other author, Navarre pleads for the limitation of
girls’ intellectual development. For him, girls should not
be taught to read or to write at all, unless they were to
become nuns:

A woman must not learn to read and write,
unless especially to become a nun, because
by reading and writing a woman becomes
evil.?°

Reading and writing would lead to the sending and
receiving of love letters, to the loss of their complexion,
and to the Devil.?”

Both Dubois and Navarre are extremists in their
opinions. While one would have girls skipping Mass to
attend lessons and working as physicians and surgeons,
the other would have them remain wholly ignorant for
their own good. As has already been demonstrated,
neither of these approaches would have been considered
wise or appropriate by other pedagogical theorists, but
not simply because the pupils in question were girls. Boys,
like girls, had to be instructed in a moral way and few went
beyond the fundamentals that would allow them to read
or follow the liturgy. If either boys or girls went further,
they were rarely exposed to controversial literature, and

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128 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

in no way were girls prevented from reading the same
pagan literature as their male counterparts. When it came
to elementary education in particular, medieval authors
did not make a distinction between boys and girls. As
a discrete process, standing alone from grammar and
university instruction that might (but rarely did) come
next, elementary instruction was relatively genderless.

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Conclusion

Ir IS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR FROM THIS OVERVIEW OF
pedagogical writings that elementary and grammar
education was considered a fit topic for contemplation
and deliberation by medieval writers. They demonstrated
that debates on basic instruction stretched sometimes over
centuries, and made for lively discourse between thinkers
and even lively reading for the teacher, the parent, and,
eventually, for us. Such writings considered how children
should be ready to enter into their communities. For able
clerical boys, that meant preparing for university studies and
a career in the Church. For another, perhaps an apprentice
in a town, learning to read, to count, and to write would
give him an edge over the competition later in life. For
a young girl, elementary education could mean better
marriage prospects, the ability to teach her own children,
or even to become a schoolmistress in her own right. For
each, elementary and grammar education could represent a
heightened understanding of Christian teachings. All these
writers understood that these were the stakes of elementary
and grammar education, and all sought to discover the best
means and methods to achieve these goals.

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130 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

For the modern reader, be they an academic researcher
or a more casual explorer of things medieval, classical and
medieval pedagogical writings are a treasury of opinions,
intellectual disputes, and schoolroom reminiscences
that cannot be found in documentary records. These
entirely subjective works serve as a backdrop for
understanding the nature of medieval elementary and
grammar education, lending colour and texture. Without
them, we could be fooled into thinking that the medieval
approach to education was uniform, unforgiving, and
uninventive. Instead, we are aware of the gravity with
which serious minds considered the instruction of
children. We appreciate the variety of viewpoints. And,
most importantly, we can see the subtle understanding
and flexibility that writers employed when examining the
challenges faced by little pupils and their teachers.

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Notes

1 Ariés, Centuries of Childhood, 137.

2 Quintilian on Education, xxi.

This tradition was engrained so early in the Renaissance
reception of Quintilian that it appeared in the orator’s entry
in the Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493, where it is explicitly
stated that his work was lost until it was rediscovered
by ‘Pogio Flore(n)tino’ in a monastery. Schedel, Liber
chronicarium, iii.3.

Augustine, Confessions, iii, 3-6.

The Colloquies of Alfric Bata, 2, 208-09.

Dumitrescu, ‘The Grammar of Pain in Alfric Bata’s
Colloquies’, 240-43.

7 Searle, The Terrors of St Trinian’s, and Willans & Searle,
Molesworth.

8 Since the Didascalicon and Metalogicon are best known by
their Greek titles, I will use them to avoid confusion.

9 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 67.

10 Some suggest Denmark (based on the popularity of the
name ‘Boethius’ there in the thirteenth century), while
others prefer England, based on its early popularity there
and its references to other texts common or originating in

England. Pseudo-Boethius, De disciplina scolarium, 5-8.

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132 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

11 Pseudo-Boethius, De disciplina scolarium, 76 & 79.

12 Philippe of Navarre, Les Quatres ages, 10.

13 It is unclear whether Gerson composed these proverbs
himself or whether he collected pre-existing sayings. This is
certainly an avenue worth further exploration.

14 Lynch, Elementary and Grammar Education, 101-02.

15 Fourteen was considered the standard age to begin university
in the Middle Ages.

16 Jean Froissart, Un Galant de douze ans, 155-56.

17 Fédou, Les Hommes de loi, 17.

18 For more on education and literacy in rural areas of France
see: Guilbert, ‘Les Ecoles rurales en Champagne au XV°
siecle’, 127-47.

19 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 160.

20 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 161.

21 Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard, 142 & 267.

22 Alexandre-Bidon & Lorcin, Systéme éducatif et cultures dans
l’Occident medieval.

23 Alexander Neckham, Sacerdos ad altare, 536.

24 For these treatises, see Humanist Educational Treatises,
edited and translated by Craig Kallendorf.

25 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, XL.ii.1-4.

26 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, (1:24) 68-69.

27 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.xvi.

28 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.iv—1.1.xiv.

29 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.ix.

30 Philippe of Navarre, Les quatre ages, 10.

31 Giles of Rome, Li Livres du gouvernement des rois, 197.

32 Commendation of the Clerk, 211.

33 Commendation of the Clerk, 223.

34 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.xx.

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Notes | 133

35 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 117.

36 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 135.

37 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 127.

38 It should be noted that these were the boys intended for full
university study in theology and medicine: Dubois, Recovery
of the Holy Land, 128.

39 Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

40 The author of On the Teaching of School is particularly
concerned that teachers and students alike make use of
the daylight for their work. Pseudo-Boethius, De disciplina
scolarium, 126-27.

41 Orme, Medieval Schools, 143-44, and Willemsen, Back to the
Schoolyard, 26.

42, Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 126-27.

43 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687.

44 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687.

45 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687. In Pseudo-Boethius’s On the
Teaching of School, it is suggested that morning is the correct
time for musical work. Pseudo-Boethius, On the Teaching of
School, 126-27.

46 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 126.

47 Dubois’s proposal that more advanced grammar should
be taught during the winter months is also present in the
statutes of the University of Toulouse in 1328. Lectures there
on the Doctrinale and the Graecisimus were limited to the
winter months: Statuts et privileges, 1, 501.

48 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 117.

49 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (68).

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134 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

51
52
53
54
55

56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63

64
65

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (70). This type of
confabulation also appears in Pseudo-Boethius, but in the
afternoon rather than the evening. Pseudo-Boethius, On the
Teaching of School, 127.

Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 126.

Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (68).

fllfric Bata, Colloquies, 85-87.

In the Netherlands, school ended in the late afternoon, at
five or six o’clock: Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard, 26.
fUlfric Bata, Colloquies, 88-91.

Orme, Medieval Schools, 44-45.

Gabriel, The Educational Ideas of Vincent of Beauvais, 20.
Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.viii.

Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.xi.

Orme, ‘Games and Education’, 49. Despite the appearance
of cock-fighting in England and in parts of France (see Mehl,
Les Jeux au royaume de France), there were attempts to curb
it. In 1518, for example, it was prohibited at Saint Paul’s
School in London. Nevertheless, the tradition persisted well
into the modern period. Teachers and pupils at Manchester
Grammar School seem to have continued to enjoy Shove
Tuesday cock-fights until 1815. Parry, Education in England,
113.

Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

It is interesting to note that many writers felt that learning
itself should be fun. Quintilian and Jerome felt that the
earliest lessons in particular should not be boring and should

catch the interest of a small child. ‘For one of the first things

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NotEs | 135

to take care of is that the child, who is not yet able to love
study, should not come to hate it and retain his fear of the
bitter taste he has experienced even beyond his first years.
Let it be a game; let him be questioned and praised and
always feel glad that he has done something; sometimes,
when he refuses a lesson, it should be given to another
child, of whom he can be jealous; sometimes he should
compete, and more often than not think he is the winner;
and finally he should be encouraged by rewards suitable to
his age’: Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.xx. ‘Offer her prizes for
spelling, tempting her with such trifling gifts as please young
children. Let her have companions too in her lessons, so that
she may seek to rival them and be stimulated by any praise
they win. You must not scold her if she is somewhat slow;
praise is the best sharpener of wits. Let her be glad when she
is first and sorry when she falls behind. Above all take care
not to make her lessons distasteful; a childish dislike often
lasts longer than childhood’: Jerome, ‘Letter to Laeta’, ch. 4.
This approach combined learning with play in order to ease
the child into the realm of formal schooling.

66 Elfric Bata, Colloquies, 94-95.

67 ‘The general suggestion from the archives in Lyon is that
the schoolmaster either used a room in their own abode or
rented a separate room or building to hold class.

68 Commendation of the Clerk, 223.

69 Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard, 141-43 & 267-68. Orme
also gives some information on the location of and nature
of schools in later medieval England. For example, some
schoolrooms were part of local churches and this caused
problems. In 1373, the churches of King’s Lynn were
forbidden from keeping schools within the same building

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136 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

‘on the grounds that the cries of beaten pupils interrupted
services and distracted worshippers. Orme, Medieval
Schools, 135-41 (136).

70 There is little information regarding possible decorations
in the medieval classroom. However, woodcuts from the
sixteenth century depict charts (especially of musical
notation) in classrooms: Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard,
267-68. Furthermore, in conversation with Dr Anthony
Masinton of the University of York in May 2012, I was
informed that restoration projects at Durham had revealed
medieval musical notation and liturgical text scratched into
the walls of a chapel within the bishop’s palace. While I have
as yet been unable to verify this independently, it suggests
that visual aids were presented to pupils on the walls of the
rooms within which they studied.

71 Benedict, Rule, ch. XLV (68).

72 Augustine on Education, 34-35.

73 Augustine on Education, 37.

74 This is part of Augustine’s philosophy of pain: that it is
omnipresent in the world in order to teach humanity about
its damnation and as a means of achieving grace. A thrashing
at the hands of a teacher combines the salutary effects of
physical punishment with pedagogical benefits: ‘For what
is the meaning of the manifold threats that are employed to
restrain the foolishness of children? What of the attendants,
the masters, ferule, the thongs, the rods and that discipline
whereby the Holy Spirit says the sides of the beloved son
should be beaten, lest he grow up unbroken? For when he is
once hardened, he can be tamed with difficulty, or perhaps
not at all. What is the purpose of all these penalties, except

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Notes | 137

to overcome ignorance and restrain base desire, which are
evils with which we come into this world?’ Augustine, City
of God, XXII.22.

75 Augustine on Education, 36.

76 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 6.

77 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 6.

78 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 6.

79 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 7.

80 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 8. See also Quintilian,
Institutio, 1.3.xii.

81 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 92.

82 ‘Likewise it is proper to add a third [aspect], namely
discretion, which shall be guarded in these: manner and
time and place’: Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 93.

83 ‘Inthe case of manner three things are required, namely good
intention and genuine purpose and restraint or measured
action’: Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 93.

84 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 95.

85 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

86 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 95.

87 Alfric Bata, Colloquies, 164-71. Scholars are uncertain
if Ailfric intended this to serve as an example of ‘good
teaching’, a first-person account of activities in an Anglo-
Saxon schoolroom, or merely as a ‘fun’ story to teach pupils
the Latin words for various crimes and how to plead for
mercy. See Dumitrescu, The Grammar of Pain, 239-40.

88 Piccolomini, 138-39. See also Quintilian, Institutio, 2.4.x-xi
and Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 94.

89 Quintilian, Institutio, 2.4.x-xi.

90 Piccolomini, ‘The Education of Boys’, 138-39.

91 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.xiv.

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92 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.xv.

93 Jerome, Letter to Laeta, pt. 4.

94 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.xiv.

95 Jerome, Letter to Laeta, pt. 4.

96 Jerome, Letter to Pacatula, pt. 1.

97 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 94.

98 Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

99 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (68). Allfric Bata, whose
Colloquies are sometimes read as a gruelling exposé of
violence in the medieval classroom, suggested moderation
in punishment: “Masters, don’t provoke your sons to
anger with needlessly harsh sternness, but discipline with
moderation and kindness, sometimes rebuking, sometimes
reproving, sometimes entreating, and sometimes whipping.’
4Ulfric Bata, Colloquies, 86-87.

100 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (69).

101 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

102 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 117.

103 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 125.

104 Pseudo-Boethius, On the Teaching of School, 99.

105 Commendation of the Clerk, 223.

106 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.1.

107 Alfric Bata, Colloquies, 90-93.

108 Commendation of the Clerk, 224. This is clearly based
on Pseudo-Boethius’s assertion: ‘But certain youths are
exceedingly obtuse, others are mediocre, and a third are
excellently sharp. Pseudo-Boethius, On the Teaching of
School, 119.

109 Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

110 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.3.vi.

111 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (67).

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Notes | 139

112 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24 (68).

113 Augustine, Confessions, i, 13-14.

114 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 131.

115 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 136.

116 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 137.

117 Hugh of Saint-Victor, Didascalicon, 43.

118 In the Commendation of the Clerk, the change from the
grammar curriculum to the dialectic one was seen as the
point when the weaker boys peeled away and the master was
left with the brighter pupils: Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

119 Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 43.

120 Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 43-44.

121 McCullough, John Adams, 259.

122 Neckham himself does not seem particularly perturbed
by the works of Ovid but he does flag an ongoing debate
about the suitability of his works in a Christian curriculum.
Alexander of Villedieu, for example, denounced the use of
Ovid’s Fasti (a calendar of pagan festivities) in the classroom.
It may simply be a coincidence that this denunciation was
made at the beginning of Alexander of Villedieu’s own work,
Ecclesiale, a calendar of the Christian year which he clearly
was positioning as an appropriate replacement. Alexander
Neckham, Sacerdos ad altare, 537 & 537, n. 26.

123 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 6-8.

124 Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, 90.

125 Quintilian on Education, xxi.

126 Jerome, ‘Letter to Laeta’, 371.

127 Augustine, Confessions, ii, 2-3.

128 Augustine, Confessions, i, 13-14 & iv, 1.

129 Augustine, Confessions, iii, 3-6.

130 Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 64.

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140 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

131 Some authors responded directly to this need to reconcile
classical works with Christian morals by adapting ancient
texts. Pierre Bersuire (also known as Petrus Berchorius)
adapted Ovid in this way in his Ovidius Moralizatus. See
Reynolds, The ‘Ovidius Moralizatus’ of Petrus Berchorius.
Meanwhile, Giovanni Dominici utterly denounced the use of
such texts within the classroom. Dominici, On the Education
of Children, 36.

132 Jerome lays out an entire curriculum of reading for Paula.
The Psalter was succeeded by Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job,
the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, the
Prophets, the Heptateuch, the books of Kings, Chronicles,
Ezra, and Esther. Only then was she allowed to read the
Song of Songs for ‘if she were to read it at the beginning she
might be harmed by not perceiving that it as the song of a
spiritual bridal expressed in fleshly language’: Jerome, Letter
to Laeta, ch. 12.

133 Philippe of Navarre, Les Quatre ages, 9.

134 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 126.

135 Gerson, ‘A.B.C. des simples gens’, VII, 154-57.

136 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 163.

137 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 68.

138 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687

139 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 163.

140 Gerson, ‘A.B.C. des simples gens’, VI, 154-57.

141 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 58.

142 Commendation of the Clerk, 225.

143 Gerson, ‘Au précepteur du Dauphin’, I, 203-15.

144 Gerson, ‘Au précepteur du Dauphin’, II, 203.

145 Gerson, ‘Au précepteur du Dauphin’, I, 212-13.

146 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 163.

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Notes | 141

147 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 209, and Quintilian,
Institutio, 1.8.v.

148 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 208-11.

149 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 214-15.

150 St. Augustine on Education, 47.

151 Gerson, ‘Au précepteur du Dauphin’, VII, 213.

152 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 216-17.

153 On a side note, Piccolomini himself wrote a feisty novella,
De duobus amantibus, which Rosamund Mitchell describes
as ‘slight, unedifying, [and] amusing’: Mitchell, The Laurels
and the Tiara, 47-55. Some did have issue with Ovid, and so
the Ovide moralisé was born in the first half of the fourteenth
century.

154 Dominici, On the Education of Children, 36.

155 Pseudo-Boethius, On the Teaching of School, 124.

156 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 9. This can be directly
compared to teaching contracts. For example, when the
municipal government of Lyon employed teachers, they
were described as ‘bon, souffisant et discret’? — ‘good,
able and prudent’ or as a “discrete personne’ — ‘prudent
person’. The character of the master was as important as his
qualifications in the real world: Archives municipales de
Lyon, CC 385 livre 10, fol. 13 & livre 11, fol. 14’.

157 Though Pseudo-Boethius does suggest that the teacher
should be intelligent but not ‘confound the ignorant’.
In other words, they should understand their audience.
Pseudo-Boethius, On the Teaching of School, 124.

158 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 136.

159 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 139.

160 Commendation of the Clerk, 216.

161 Commendation of the Clerk, 216.

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142 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

162 Commendation of the Clerk, 223.

163 Commendation of the Clerk, 223.

164 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, XI, 687.

165 The comportment of the master is paramount in the Pseudo-
Boethian recommendations too. There the lone master is
seen as representing all masters and any misbehaviour would
reflect poorly on the whole profession. Pseudo-Boethius, On
the Teaching of School, 129.

166 Augustine on Education, 338.

167 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 686.

168 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 686.

169 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687.

170 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687.

171 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

172 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

173 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 687.

174 Commendation of the Clerk, 215.

175 Commendation of the Clerk, 216.

176 Commendation of the Clerk, 217.

177 Commendation of the Clerk, 217-18.

178 Gerson, ‘A.B.C. des simples gens’, VII, 154.

179 Quintilian, Institutio, 1.1.vi.

180 Barton Tobin, Vincent of Beauvais, 143.

181 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 175.

182 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 176.

183 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 178.

184 Jerome, ‘Letter to Laeta’, pt. 4.

185 Gerson, ‘Pro pueris’, IX, 688.

186 Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys’, 169.

187 Vincent, De eruditione, 177.

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Notes | 143

188 Piccolomini, The Education of Boys, 141. See also Willemsen,
Back to the Schoolyard, 196-97, for fifteenth-century Italian
images of girls learning spinning and needlework while their
male counterparts were instructed in reading.

189 Jerome, ‘Letter to Laeta’, pt. 10.

190 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 178.

191 Jerome, ‘Letter to Laeta’, pt. 12.

192 Abelard, ‘De studio litterarum’, ch. 325-36.

193 Barton Tobin, Vincent of Beauvais, 32-33.

194 Du Chevalier de la Tour Landry, 176-77.

195 From Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum doctrina quoted in
Gabriel, Educational Ideas of Vincent of Beauvais, 16.

196 Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione, 176.

197 Du Chevalier de la Tour Landry, 178.

198 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 138.

199 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 119.

200 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 138.

201 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 138-39.

202 Dubois, Recovery of the Holy Land, 150-51.

203 Philippe of Navarre, Les Quatre Ages, 17.

204 Philippe of Navarre, Les Quatre Ages, 16-17.

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146 | MEDIEVAL PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS

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Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
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Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

Credits

Cover created by Kismet Press from: 1) Spitz Master,
The Four Evangelists. Ink on parchment, ca.1420.

Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, lido.getty.
edu-gm-obj110501. <https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Spitz_Master_(French,_active_
about_1415_-_1425) -_ The _Four_Evangelists_-_
Google_Art_Project.jpg>; <https://www.getty.edu/
art/collection/objects/103429/spitz-master-the-four-
evangelists-french-about-1420/>; 2) Master of Anthony
of Burgundy, Miniature des quatre évangélistes extraite
des Heures noires de Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Illumination
on parchment, 15th century. Vienna, Osterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobo, MS 1856, fol.32”.
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sforza_
Black_hours_-_%C3%96NB_Cod1856_f32v_- four_
evangelists.jpg>. Original images in the public domain,
edited by Kismet Press, and republished under the same

license.

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

Throughout the Middle Ages, great intellectuals from
Jerome to Jean Gerson all commented on education.
What was its purpose? What practices best achieved
the intended aims? This volume introduces the central
themes that ran through literature on education, from
its fixation on moral instruction to recommendations
on playtime. It explores writing from the first century
to the educational treatises of Renaissance Italy and
discusses the important place that education, even of
small children, held in medieval thought.

Dr Sarah B. Lynch is an assistant professor at Angelo
State University, Texas. A graduate of University College
Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, and the University
of Leeds, she specializes in the history of elementary
and grammar education in the later Middle Ages. Her
doctoral thesis, concentrating on schools, teachers,
and pupils in late-medieval Lyon, was published by
Amsterdam University Press in 2017. She received
the Olivia Remie Constable Award from the Medieval
Academy of America in 2018 for her ongoing project
on educational legacies in medieval French wills.

Sarah B. Lynch. Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome. Epitomes 3. Leeds: Kismet Press, 2018.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Available at https://kismet.press/portfolio/medieval-pedagogical-writings.

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